u/contrarian1505

Most people open the charts at 9:30 and wonder why they're already confused. The trade starts before the market opens. This matters even more in a funded options account, because one oversized 0DTE trade can put you near your drawdown line before the day even gets going.

Here's exactly what I do in the 30 minutes before open.

Step 1: Mark the key levels on SPY

First thing. No news, no Twitter, no distractions. Just the chart.

I mark PDH and PDL previous day high and low. These are the levels price almost always respects or reacts to. If SPY is pushing into PDH at open, I'm not blindly buying. If it's sitting right at PDL, I want to see if it holds or breaks.

After that I look at higher timeframe liquidity on the 1 hour chart. Where are the obvious areas price might get drawn to? Where has price stalled before? Those zones matter more than anything an indicator tells you.

Levels take maybe 10 minutes. Nothing fancy. Just knowing where the important areas are before price starts moving.

Step 2: Check Forex Factory for news

Once levels are marked I check Forex Factory for any high impact news events scheduled for the day. Red folder events especially.

If something big is dropping right at open or within the first hour I'm either sizing down or sitting out that specific window. News can invalidate a clean setup instantly. Better to know before than find out mid-trade.

This takes 5 minutes max.

Step 3: Write down my account risk line

Before I even think about entry, I check the account side of the trade. Max loss for the day. Position size. Where my drawdown line is. And whether a full size trade even makes sense for the day.

I feel this part is important in a funded options account because the setup can be clean and still be a bad trade if the size puts the account rules at risk.

For SPY 0DTE, I’d rather miss a trade than take one that leaves no room to manage.

Step 4: Wait for My Setup

That's it. I don't pre-plan trades. I don't decide "I'm buying today" or "looks bearish, going short." Everything after this is just waiting for the 15 minute ORB to form at open and seeing what the market actually wants to do.

EMA confluence, clean break, volume confirmation that's when I act. Not before.

Why this works

The routine isn't complicated because it doesn't need to be. Most of trading is just knowing where the important levels are and not being surprised when price reaches them. 30 minutes of prep means you're not making decisions reactively when the market opens you already know what you're looking for.

No routine = sitting there at 9:30 trying to figure out what to do while price is already moving. That's how you get bad entries.

What does your pre-market routine look like? Anything you check that I'm missing?

I feel that the conslidation in SPY and QQQ is over and maybe we can see some pushover in prices going forward in the day today. ALthough not quite optimistic as there remains some potential for downward move as well.

I’ve been trading with prop firms for over a year now. 

But, my journey started with crypto trading during the 2021 bull run. Back then, I developed a trend-following system riding the alt waves, and most of my trading knowledge came from trading Bitcoins and alts. When I decided to get serious about trading, the natural next step was to try crypto prop firms.

At first, I couldn’t pass any of them!

Like many unprofitable traders, I doubled down on educating myself with EMAs + VWAP + TPO + order flow + ICT… just name it and I bet that I’ve studied those too. Slowly, all that studying paid off, and it helped me to become a breakeven trader in the crypto space.

It was around that time that a friend (who trades US stocks) suggested I give an options-focused prop firm a shot. I was hesitant because options were a new market for me. But, I still went with it and decided to keep it simple by focusing only on: SPY, trade directionally, and avoid jumping between tickers.

Once I had a basic feel for SPY price action,  I took a $10K Advanced account and set a modest daily goal: $100–$200 profit per day, then done. 

Within 5 days, I passed the advanced challenge and moved into the funded account. 

Sharing a breakdown of my SPY plan:

My main setups were –

1. Pullbacks into a 1-min or 3-min trend

If SPY was in a clear bullish trend, I looked for pullbacks into the short-term trend. I used the 13, 21, and 34 EMAs as my trend guide. 

1. Liquidity sweeps of major levels

I  watched the previous day's H/L and important H/L from the 15-min, 30-min, and 1-hour charts. If SPY swept one of those levels and gave a strong reaction, I’d look for a quick scalp. These were usually reaction trades, not trades where I’d sit and hope for something big.

1. Fibonacci retracements into the 618 AKA golden pocket

After a strong leg up, if the price started retracing, I watched the 0.618 area. If that level lined up with the broader trend and the reaction looked clean, I’d look for an entry there.

Risk-wise, I kept it very simple.  I checked my available drawdown and divided it by 8, so one bad trade wouldn’t put the whole account in danger. 

I also had a few rules to avoid overtrading:

-> Trade only during the opening hours of the NY session
-> Under 3 trades per day
-> Stop trading once I hit $100-$200 during the eval
-> No forcing trades if my setup wasn’t there
-> If I lost two trades in a row, I stopped trading for the day

The last rule helped a lot because one of my major mistakes in crypto prop firms was trying to make money back immediately after a loss. 

Once I moved into the funded account, I kept the same plan as eval. 

During eval, I usually stopped at my $200 target [to stay consistent]. But on the first day of my funded account, I let one of my better setups breathe a little more, while still keeping my risk controlled. That day, I ended up +$700

The next day +$800, and the day after +$1,000. 

By the fourth day, I was up $3.7k on the account and eligible to request a $500 payout. My first actual payout from a funded account!

This win wasn’t instant. It came from having a structure that fit my pace better. The no-time limit + single step challenge also helped because  I didn’t feel forced to take mediocre trades just to finish quickly.

Lesson learned: treat each funded account like proving consistency, not gambling. Have a daily routine, limit profit targets, and protect your capital first.

Would love any advice from more experienced prop firm traders on my setup, still learning.

I personally feel we might see a retracement back to the falling trendline before deciding where the markets might be heading.

So i experienced hailstones with rain today in middle of the warm day