Weekly Trading Plan Template for Futures Traders

What a Weekly Plan Is For

Planning only the day in front of you hides things that span several sessions. A CPI report on Wednesday changes how you treat Tuesday. A prior-week high 6 points above the open matters differently on Monday than it does on Friday. A single losing day tells you almost nothing about a strategy, while a week of trades with a written plan to compare against tells you a good deal about your execution. This template is what I would use to turn that into a repeatable process. It is a structure, not a promise about results.

Section 1: Sunday Context Review (about 20 minutes)

Futures reopen Sunday evening, so this is best done before then. Check the CME schedule for any holiday or early-close changes that week, because session times are not the same every week.

• Prior week summary. Where did ES and NQ close relative to the prior week's range? Did price trend or rotate?
• Weekly pivots. Using last week's high (H), low (L), and close (C): P = (H + L + C) / 3, R1 = 2P - L, S1 = 2P - H, R2 = P + (H - L), S2 = P - (H - L). Hypothetical example for ES with H 6800, L 6700, C 6760: P = 6753.33, R1 = 6806.67, S1 = 6706.67, R2 = 6853.33, S2 = 6653.33. Treat them as reference prices many traders can see, not predictions.
• Calendar. List every major release and speaker for the week with times in ET. Note which days have 8:30 AM ET data, since those shape the pre-open gap.
• Bias statement. One sentence, with a built-in way to be wrong: 'ES opened the week above last week's high, so I lean toward buying pullbacks until price closes back below it.'

Section 2: Daily Pre-Open Routine (about 15 minutes)

• Overnight range, the prior day's close, and where price sits relative to both.
• Today's calendar items and any no-trade windows.
• A draft plan with conditions: what you will look for, your maximum daily loss, and the size you will use.

KPL levels belong to the next step, not this one. They are fixed reference prices anchored to the regular-session opening print at 9:30 AM ET, and the standard ES and NQ map has four levels built from full-session and after-hours travel. Since the anchor is the open, the completed levels are not known during the pre-open routine. After the opening print, add them to the chart and note any that sit near a weekly pivot or prior-day price. See the KPL trading page for how the levels are built.

Section 3: Trade Log (during the session)

For each trade, record:

• Entry time, price, size, and direction
• The planned stop and target, written before entry
• The actual exit, and whether it matched the plan
• One sentence on the setup and what price did

Add costs. At $12.50 per ES tick and $1.25 per MES tick, one tick of slippage is real money, and a log without commissions and slippage overstates results. Also note that stop orders can fill beyond the stop price in fast markets.

Section 4: Friday or Weekend Review (about 30 minutes)

• P&L by session, best day and worst day, after costs.
• Adherence rate. What share of trades followed every rule: entry, stop, target, size? A target such as 90% or more is a personal standard, not a market statistic. If you have fewer than a few dozen trades, avoid drawing conclusions about the strategy itself.
• Winners versus plan. How many reached the planned target, were cut early, or were extended without a rule?
• Losers versus plan. How many were stopped at the planned price versus widened or exited early?
• One execution change. Choose a single behavior to adjust next week. A hypothetical example: if the log shows most rule breaks happened after 12:00 PM ET, you could set a rule to stop new entries by then. Make the change small, written, and testable.

Making the Plan Stick

A plan nobody sees is easy to skip. Posting a short version, even just the bias statement, key prices, and calendar risks, to a trading partner or community makes skipping it uncomfortable. The weekly review closes the loop. Without it, the plan turns into a ritual and nothing gets learned from it.

If you want daily ES/NQ KPL, a course, and a community to share plans in, the Intro membership is $97/month after a 7-day trial.