Checklist

The Checklist tool puts conditions on the chart and lets you satisfy them there. Clicking a box ticks the item; the counter and progress bar in the header update as you go. That interaction is the whole point — a list you cannot tick is a picture of a list, and gets read once and ignored.

Items are typed one at a time. Double-click an item to edit it, and Enter creates the next item rather than ending the edit, so a list can be written straight through. Backspace on an empty item removes it, Tab and the arrow keys move between items, and Escape finishes. Hovering near the left edge brings up a + snapped to the nearest boundary, which inserts an item exactly there and puts the caret straight into it. Throughout, the boxes and the other items stay drawn — only the item being typed into is replaced by an input, so the list keeps its shape while it is being edited.

Underneath, the list is stored in the Markdown task-list convention: one item per line, with a leading [x] marking one done. That is why a list pasted from a wiki page, a ticket or a notes app arrives with its wording and its ticks intact rather than as one long item. Bullet characters are stripped on paste, so a plain bulleted list also converts cleanly.

1. 1
   Select the Checklist tool

   Click the Checklist icon in the annotation group.
2. 2
   Click to place

   One click drops a four-item skeleton and opens the first item for editing.
3. 3
   Write the items

   Type an item and press Enter to start the next. Backspace on an empty item removes it.
4. 4
   Work the list

   Click a box to tick it. The counter and progress bar update immediately.
5. 5
   Insert or remove

   Hover the left edge and click the + to insert an item at that boundary, or the delete control for the item under the pointer.

• Pre-trade conditions — the checks that must pass before the order goes in. Ticking them on the chart is what turns a remembered routine into an executed one.
• Entry criteria for a specific setup — placed beside the pattern it applies to, so the conditions are read against the actual bars rather than from memory.
• Session open routine — levels marked, news checked, size set. A reusable list cleared each morning.
• Risk gates — position sizing, correlation exposure and daily loss limit, as items that have to be affirmed rather than assumed.
• Thesis invalidation — the observations that would kill the idea. Ticking one is the signal to exit, which is far harder to argue with than a vague feeling.
• Hand-off before cover — what the next person needs to have confirmed before taking the book.

An item should be answerable yes or no by looking at the chart or at a number. "Trend aligned" is answerable; "market feels strong" is not, and an unanswerable item is one that gets ticked out of momentum rather than judgement. Phrase each item as a condition with a test: "Above the 200 EMA on the daily", "Stop under 1.5% of equity", "No earnings inside the holding period".

Keep lists short. A five-item list gets worked through; a twenty-item list gets ticked wholesale without being read, which is worse than having no list because it manufactures false confidence. If a routine genuinely has twenty checks, split it into separate lists placed at the points in the chart where each set applies.

The counter deliberately stays neutral until every item is ticked, and only then takes the accent colour. That is a small thing that matters: partial completion should not look like success, because a partially satisfied setup is not a setup.

A checklist is usually read as conditions for entry, but it is at least as useful inverted. Write the observations that would falsify the idea — a close back inside the range, a failure to hold the retest, a correlated market disagreeing — and place the list beside the setup. Ticking one is then an exit signal you committed to in advance, at a point when you had no position and no reason to rationalise.

Set the completed marker to cross for these lists. A tick reads as "good, done", which is exactly the wrong connotation when the item being marked is a reason to get out.

• 1.The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande
• 2.Trading Discipline and Process — Investopedia
• 3.Trading in the Zone — Mark Douglas