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Educational only — not financial advice. Intraday and professional trading carry high risk; most day traders lose money. These lessons teach a process to study and test, never a recommendation or guarantee.
Professional Desk · Lesson

The pre-trade routine

Five lenses, in order, before any trade — so context always precedes action.

Method from Mike Bellafiore (SMB Capital) · ← Back to course

1 Why this matters

Context before action

A fixed pre-trade routine converts a trade from an impulse into a decision.

Mike Bellafiore's PlayBook framework distills the read into five decision lenses, checked in order. Running the same five every time forces context before action — and most poor trades fail at least one lens, which a checklist catches before the entry, not after the loss.

2 The five lenses

Checked in order, every time

Five lenses, in order, before any trade 1 · Big Picture — market environment and trend 2 · Intraday Fundamentals — the catalyst / news 3 · Technicals — chart, levels, timeframes 4 · Tape — live order-flow confirmation 5 · Intuition — earned pattern recognition
The five lenses, in order. A clean chart with no catalyst, against the market, with heavy opposing tape is a very different trade from the same chart with the wind at its back.

3 Using the routine

One checklist, every trade

Before any entry, run the five lenses out loud or on paper. If a setup fails a lens — a clean chart with no catalyst, or strong opposing tape — you either pass or size down. The goal is not to predict; it is to ensure context always precedes action. Pair this with the intraday playbooks: the playbook tells you what the setup is; the five lenses tell you whether to take it now.