The 10-Minute Morning Routine That Gives Forex Traders an Unfair Advantage

Many forex traders rely solely on trading charts, but real edge in my opinion comes from understanding the economic drivers behind currency moves. 

Being more interested in the economic drivers can help you mitigate risk in the markets, and even stay in the trade when many other traders get out. 

Today I will discuss my morning trading routine that sets me up for the day and takes all of 5-10 minutes to complete, and it’s all free. 

Let’s get started.

The first thing I do is open up the economic calendar. Here I can view what data is coming up for the day and what markets it will impact. 

I can also look at what news has been released. Being from the UK we often see data out of China, Australia, New Zealand and Japan released through the night, so it’s important to catch up on any of those releases. 

I want to find out here if the data coming up is important and if there’s anything that will impact my trade ideas or trades that I am currently involved in. 

Some economic calendars I use: 

The next thing I like to do is check up on any headlines I may have missed that does not appear on economic calendars. 

This may be something like a Trump truth social post or something that is of geo-political risk. These events aren’t on the traditional economic calendars, so we have to use other sources for this information.

Social media can be a great tool for this, I am not a huge fan of twitter or X but for headline news it can be fairly good. One twitter account I like to use is Financial Juice. They release everything from key headlines to data releases. They also have a website that does the same thing and offers free squark that works in the background and announces data as it comes through. 

Forex Live is also a great resource for financial information, the website is a little clunky for my liking but the information is always great in my opinion. 

Next we flick through the charts, not to find a trade but to read sentiment. 

What is the VIX (volatility index) doing? Is it spiking? This gives me a sense of the tone of the market. If the VIX is spiking that would tell me the market is in risk off mode and we would likely see JPY rallies and Stocks lower. 

I also take a look at the changes in the currencies and the bond yields, if the US bond yields are rallying then we can often see USD strength, so I can see if the market is buying or selling USD’s pretty quickly. 

This simple 3 step process that I follow, helps me understand where the market will be for the day, what storyline is driving sentiment and what upcoming data I need to be aware of.

This keeps me well informed and also gives me confidence knowing that I am prepared for most market situations. 

Hope this one helps!