Mondays are where most traders blow themselves up and not because the market is wild, but because they come in with zero plan. I build my Monday resistance and support levels before the bell because I want structure, not adrenaline, I get enough of that as a mom of 4.
My routine actually starts before I even walk to my desk. When I wake up, I grab my phone and scroll through news, upgrades, downgrades, and early bid/ask activity on ThinkorSwim. I’m not making decisions here, my head is still on my pillow. I’m just taking inventory. I want to know if anything already has attention before I see it on a chart.
Once the kids are out the door for school and I’m in front of my two monitors, that’s when the real work starts. The first thing I check is what’s gapping up or down. It’s easy to spot with the premarket highlighted. I’m always looking for relative strength or weakness, especially when the overall market is flat. And I love looking for strength in uptrends too. This is how you find the leaders. If /ES is neutral and something is already moving with intention, that name earns a spot on my Monday chart list.
Then I open TrendSpider and run through a large batch of names. I’m not looking for “maybe” charts, I’m looking for clean structure. Something has to catch my eye immediately: a clean downtrend break with MACD cross up, a name pushing into new highs, a bounce off a key moving average like the 10SMA, 50SMA or 200SMA, or one of my favorite signals: a 13/30 EMA cross on the 4-hour that aligns with the daily trend. If the chart looks like a random chop of overlapping candles, it’s out. I’m not going to force drawing a pattern on it. I don’t waste time trying to make ugly charts tradable. And when I say ugly, I mean CHOP.
Once a name makes the cut, I journal the actual levels. That includes pivot highs and lows, unfilled gaps, and updated moving averages because all these shift weekly. I do reuse old levels but I don’t just hope they’re still valid, I go over and make sure they still align. The entire edge comes from keeping the map updated as the market changes.
From there, I narrow down. I do not try to track ten or twelve tickers into the open. If you watch everything, you end up catching nothing. I pick a small group I truly want to keep strikes open for and then I let price action come to the levels I prepared. I don’t chase breakouts I didn’t plan for, and I don’t invent trades just to feel busy.
Once the bell opens, I’m watching how the options premium on those tickers reacts at the levels I have, so if I have a name I like, I’m watching for a little drop in that premium to step in the options trade. Also a lot of times I will post a trade idea and say “trade idea if above 555” or something, BUT if it ends up dropping to one of the support levels I had posted in my journal (like 542), then I’m like oh wow this could be a nice rebound here. So even though the name didn’t break out initially, it’s still on my radar for the day.
This process works because it removes impulse. It forces me to start the week with intention, trade names with structure, and react only where I’ve already done the thinking. Most traders improvise and then wonder why they’re emotional by 10:15 AM. Don’t improvise, prepare. If you want to learn more about the community visit my About page.
-Rachel @rachels_44
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