Scalping is fast, and fast is where discipline dies. The fix is to make your important decisions before the open — when you're calm, unbiased, and not staring at a green or red number. A pre-bell checklist turns willpower into a plan you just follow.
The checklist
1. Regime. Read the net-GEX sign — am I fading or following today?
2. Levels. Mark the flip, walls, gravity, VWAP, and session levels — where are the decision points?
3. Size. Decide contracts/dollar-risk per trade based on the day's volatility, not in the moment.
4. Loss limit. Set the hard daily number and the two-strike rule that ends your day.
5. Direction plan. Given the regime and levels, what are the 1–2 setups you're actually looking for, and what conditions make you sit out?
Decide the boundaries when you're calm, then trade inside them when you're not. That's the whole edge of a plan.
Why “boundaries first” works
This checklist is the whole idea: you settle the boundaries — direction, size, risk, when to act — in advance, and the session becomes a matter of following them. It's the opposite of improvising trades because the screen is moving. The plan protects you from your in-session self.
Where the map comes in
NoVo does the first two lines of the checklist for you: it reads the regime and marks the flip, the walls, gravity, VWAP and the session levels on SPY, QQQ and IWM before the bell, then keeps redrawing them as the day moves and tells you what price has done at each of them before. Lines three through five are yours and stay yours — the size, the loss limit, the setups you will actually take. The map is the input; the plan is still your work.