Intermediate · Lesson 11 of 11 · 6 min read
Alerts and a daily routine
Watching charts all day leads to tiredness and too many trades. A short routine and a few well-placed alerts let the market come to you.
Why a routine helps
Most bad trades happen when we are bored, tired or chasing. A routine does your thinking at a calm moment, before the market starts moving, so that during the day you only act when price reaches a place you already chose.
Let price come to you. Mark your levels, set alerts, and step away. No alert, no trade.
A simple daily routine
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Before (10 to 15 minutes) | Check today’s big news. Look at the bigger timeframe and mark key levels. Pick one or two markets and the setups you will look for. Set alerts. |
| During | Wait for alerts. Only take trades that match your plan. Stick to your daily limits. |
| After (10 minutes) | Log every trade in your journal with a picture of the chart. Note one thing you did well and one to improve. |
Setting alerts on BTM
- Line alerts: draw a horizontal line, trend line or ray, then click the 🔔 on its toolbar. In its settings, choose “Only once” or “Every time (once per candle)”, and add a note to remind yourself why.
- Indicator and scanner alerts: click 🔔 Alerts and tick the tool, for example a scanner’s best grades only.
- How you hear about it: a pop-up, a sound and desktop notifications, and connect Telegram to get alerts on your phone.
Daily limits
Decide in advance when you stop: for example after 3 trades, or after losing 2R in a day. Limits protect you on the days when nothing is working and the urge to win it back is strongest.
At 7:45am a gold trader sees US inflation figures due at 1:30pm. They mark the Asia session high and low and yesterday’s high, and set line alerts on all three. Then they get on with their morning.
At 9:20 an alert fires at the Asia high. They check the setup against the plan, take one trade, and note that they will not open anything new from 1pm until after the news. Total screen time before lunch: about 30 minutes.
Common mistakes
- Setting dozens of alerts, so none of them means anything.
- Treating every alert as a reason to trade without checking the setup.
- Skipping the after-trading review on bad days.
- No daily loss limit.
Check yourself
1. How do you put an alert on a line you have drawn?
Select it and click the 🔔 on its toolbar.
2. An alert fires. Does that mean you should trade?
No. It means it is time to check whether the setup matches your plan.
3. Why set a daily loss limit?
To stop you trying to win back losses on a bad day.
Try it on BTM
For education only, not financial advice. Trading carries a high risk of losing money, especially with leverage. Only trade with money you can afford to lose.
For educational purposes only. Nothing here is financial advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and trading carries a high risk of losing money, so only trade with money you can afford to lose. Read the risk warning.