The Monday Morning Routine for Futures Traders: A Weekly Planning Framework

The trade you take Monday at 9:35 AM ET is shaped by decisions you either made on Sunday or never made at all. A daily plan looks at yesterday and today. A weekly plan adds the part daily planning misses: where last week finished, which events are coming, and how you did against your own rules. Here is a short routine that covers it.

Sunday evening: set the context

This takes about fifteen minutes and requires no prediction.

1. Mark last week's reference prices. On ES and NQ charts, note last week's high, low, close and midpoint. They are reference points you can see, not forecasts. Some traders watch how Monday's early trade interacts with them, and you can test whether that matters for your own style.
2. Scan the week's calendar. Use the official Fed and BLS calendars and your broker's calendar. For each major release, write down the day, the time in your timezone, and whether you will trade, reduce or sit out. Check for holiday or early-close sessions, since exchange schedules and roll dates are not universal.
3. Check the market context. Ask whether last week was mostly directional or mostly rotational, and whether volatility is higher or lower than it was a few weeks ago. This is a note for your own bias about which of your setups to emphasize, not a signal.

Futures sessions on CME Globex equity products typically run Sunday evening to Friday afternoon Central Time with a daily break, but check the CME product and holiday schedule for the specifics.

Monday morning: operational setup

Spend about ten minutes before the open.

1. Review the overnight session. Compare where futures are trading to Friday's close, and whether the overnight range touched any of last week's reference prices. Note any data release before the open.
2. Write three limits. A realistic weekly profit expectation, a maximum weekly loss at which you stop and review, and one specific behavior to work on. Define the loss limit before the first trade, not after a bad run. A target is not a promise and the loss limit is the number that matters.
3. Wait for the opening print for KPL work. The KPL are fixed reference prices anchored to the regular-session opening print, so they are not known before RTH opens. The standard ES and NQ map has four levels from full-session and after-hours travel, and they do not move intraday. Use the Sunday work for context only, then build the day's levels from the open print. See KPL trading for the method.

Label your timezone in the plan. The regular US equity cash open is 9:30 AM ET, which is 8:30 AM CT.

Why one behavior goal beats a vague one

Saying I will trade better produces nothing you can check on Friday. A specific goal is checkable. Examples: do not add to a losing position, exit at the planned target rather than holding for more, or stop after two consecutive stop-outs. Work on one for five sessions and count the violations.

Friday review

The routine only works if you compare the week against the plan. Answer these:

• Did you stay inside the weekly loss limit?
• How many times did you break the behavior goal?
• Which session was best and which was worst, and what was different about your execution?
• Did the events you flagged behave as you planned for, and did your size match the plan?

After a dozen weeks you have a dozen reviewed records. That is useful for finding habits, such as how you trade on event weeks or after a losing Monday. It is not a statistical edge test, and twelve weeks of notes does not prove a strategy works. Keep the two ideas separate.

What the routine does not do

It does not predict direction, and it does not guarantee a profitable week. It reduces the chance of an avoidable mistake, such as forgetting an event or breaking a loss limit you never wrote down. If you trade a prop firm account, add the firm's daily and trailing loss rules to the weekly note and read their account agreement directly.

The Intro plan is $97 a month after a 7-day trial and includes the course, daily ES and NQ KPL reference levels, and the community. It gives you the daily levels, and the weekly planning above is the part you do yourself.