Is Over-Preparation Hurting Your Trading?

Alexander Graham Bell once said “Preparation is the key to success”
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​And I don’t think anyone disagrees with that… especially in the trading arena.
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But can you do too much preparation?
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Let’s explore.
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So, imagine you have a pre-market checklist. It’s a sequence of checks you perform before the trading day.
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Designed to give you market conditions context, highlight intraday headline risk, and generate potential trade ideas.
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You run through it, make some notes, and feel prepared and ready for that first trade.
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It took you 20 minutes.
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Now imagine if you spend 2 hours doing exactly the same thing…
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You run through the checklist, and then what?
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You’d probably start to look closer, longer, checking you hadn’t missed something.
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And actually what happens is you start to wonder if your first check was accurate…

• Is that really a trend?
• Should I have taken that 50-day low into account?
• Do I need more key levels?
• I better check the far-month cotton futures…

What happens is that you start to take on way more information than you need.
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​Because you’ve got another hour and 40 to kill right?… you need to do something.
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Which likely clouds your initial perspective and actually ends up creating anxiety.
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The last damn thing you need before the trading day!
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​So, keep things brief.
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​Only check what you need to check.
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Run through that checklist once, get prepared, and then it’s game time.
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Sure, if you want to spend hours after the trading day reviewing, reflecting, and studying, go for it. It’s not going to create anxiety, and if it does, it’s not going to impact your trading.
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It’s pre-match that matters.