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Before every trading day, it can help to take a few minutes to run through a pre-trade routine or checklist to help minimize mistakes throughout the day.

The process of running through a routine only takes a couple of minutes, but might save you some frustration and money.

1. Check economic calendar

High impact economic events can cause price spikes/gaps, creating significant slippage on stop-loss orders. It's best to avoid trading for the few minutes with high impact scheduled news events.

Check your economic calendar before trading, and note the high impact news-times.

2. Launch platform

Launch your platform. Make sure your quotes is streaming (not lagging or sporadic) and that the program is running smoothly. Most brokers provide reliable data feeds, but problems can arise. If the data feed is intermittent or seems inaccurate, don't trade until the issue is fixed. If it looks right, proceed.

3. Trading correct account and contract

In Meta Trader, you can log in to multiple accounts using the same platform. Make sure you are trading the correct account. Be especially vigilant if you practice in a simulated account, and have live accounts. You don't want to end the day thinking how profitable it was, only to realize you traded in simulation instead of with real capital.

4. Write text notes to yourself

On your chart, put text notes stating when high impact news releases are. If engrossed in a trade you may forget about one of these events, costing you dearly. Write it down on your chart.

If the event occurs later in the day, scroll over and put the text note near the approximate time of the announcement. That way you will see it when the time comes. 

5. Triple check your automated strategies

Even if you trade manually, you may have some automated orders. For example, in Meta Trader, you can send out stop-loss orders and targets the moment you enter a position. Make sure these stop-loss