Your review starts with a map you couldn't edit

Review a trading day in two passes. First, what price did at your pre-open levels. Then, what you did at those same prices. Do it in that order, and only after the close.

The usual review starts at the bottom line. You were red, so you hunt for the trade that hurt. You were green, so you skip the review. Either way the chart gets read with hindsight. Every turn looks obvious once you know where it went.

A level drawn before the bell fixes that. It was written down when you didn't know the outcome. So the question changes. You stop asking what you should have done. You ask what the market did at places you already knew about. That question has a factual answer, and facts are what a review needs.

Pull up the morning's map first. If you use the Morning Map, that's the SPY, QQQ and IWM zones our model drew at 8:40 ET. They come from prior sessions only. The free page lists each zone with its low and high price.

Open a 5-minute chart of the session next to it. For each zone, answer one question: did price reach it today? Write yes or no beside every zone. Don't skip the ones that never got touched, because a quiet zone tells you how far the day actually travelled.

If you draw your own levels, the routine is identical. The only rule is that the map must exist before the open. Levels added at lunch, or moved after a stop-out, don't count. They were drawn by someone who had already seen the answer.

Price only does a handful of things at a zone, so give each touch one label. It turned and moved away. It closed through on your entry chart and kept going. Or it sat inside the zone and chopped.

Use candle closes for this, not wicks. A wick that pokes through and snaps back is still a hold. A close beyond the zone, followed by a retest from the other side, is a break. That distinction matters later, because exits work on the same closes.

Chop inside a zone is its own answer. A zone is a place to wait. A day spent mostly inside one was a day with little to do. Writing that down protects you. Next time a session looks like that by mid-morning, you'll recognise it sooner.

Now bring in your trades. In TraderLog, trade replay draws your fills on a TradingView chart. Each entry and exit sits right on the candles. If you journal by hand, mark your fills on a screenshot.

Compare each fill with the nearest zone. Did you buy inside a zone, before price had decided? Did you wait for a close above it and then chase three candles later? Did you exit on a wick that reversed? Each of those is a different mistake with a different fix.

Also look at the zones where you did nothing. If price turned cleanly at a level you had and you missed it, ask why. Sometimes the answer is fine: you were already in a trade. Sometimes you were on the wrong screen.

Run it after the close, in the same order every day.

Squeeze the review into one line in the day's journal entry. Keep the format fixed so lines compare across days. For example: QQQ hit the upper zone at 10:10 and turned on a close. I bought inside it and got stopped.

One line is enough because the detail lives on the chart. The line is an index. It records what the zone did and what you did, and nothing about how you felt about the P&L.

On Friday, read the five lines together next to the weekly report card. Patterns jump out that no single day shows. Maybe you only lose when you enter inside a zone. Maybe your misses all happen before 10:00. Pick the one that repeats most and make it next week's only fix.