Entry checklist: your system's rules in front of you

7 min read · How to build a checklist for your trading system and use the window that counts the percentage of matching rules right above the chart.

Level:

Short version for experts: tables, lists and screenshots only.

Words in this lesson (12)

Stop — A price chosen in advance at which the trade is closed at a loss, so the loss doesn't grow bigger.

Order book — The list of all buy and sell orders at every price at this very second.

Wall — A very large order in the order book at one price — many times bigger than its neighbors. It often acts as a wall for the price.

Volume — How much money or how many units changed hands over a period. A move on high volume is more reliable than one on low volume.

Timeframe — What stretch of time one candle on the chart shows: a minute, an hour, a day.

Candle — A bar on the chart for one stretch of time: where the price opened, where it closed, its high and its low.

Level — A price where the market has already turned before. Support is below the price, resistance is above it.

Breakout — The price has gone through a level and held beyond it.

Trend — A steady direction of the price: every new high and low is above the previous one — a rise; below — a fall.

Setup — A ready trading rule: under what condition to enter, in which direction, where the stop and the target are.

Screener — A filtering program: it scans hundreds of stocks or coins and shows only those that match the given criteria.

Position — An open trade: what you have bought or sold and haven't closed yet.

Why a checklist if you have a system

A trading system is the set of rules you trade by. A checklist is its last step: a short list of what must line up before you click "Buy" or "Sell". Pilots and surgeons work with checklists not because they don't know their job, but because under pressure people miss the obvious.

Until the rules are second nature, you need to see them in front of you. Not on a sticky note by the monitor — but in a window that sits above the chart and checks by itself whatever can be checked.

What a good checklist looks like

Practitioners build it the same way:

Step	Question	Example rules
Context	Is the market on my side?	EMA trend, higher timeframe, structure of lows
Location	Where am I entering?	near a level, a breakout on a close, a retest, room to move by ATR
Signal	What confirms the entry?	a reversal candle, volume above average, RSI divergence, a wall in the order book
Risk	How much will I lose if I'm wrong?	stop set, stop no farther than X%, reward/risk of at least 2
Me	Am I in shape?	daily limit not used up, calm, not trying to win it back

5–10 rules, no more: people stop reading a long list.

Risk is not up for negotiation. A good signal with a bad reward-to-risk ratio is still a bad trade. That's why risk rules are marked mandatory: if such a rule isn't met, MAMAY says "Don't enter" at any percentage.

Build your own checklist

Settings → "Trading and risk" → "Trade entry checklist".

Take a template ("Level breakout", "Retest after a breakout", "Level bounce", "Order book scalp") or start from scratch — the "+ checklist" button. You can have several checklists: one for each setup in your system.
Remove what you don't need and add your own from the rule library — each rule says what it checks and why. "MAMAY checks it" means the rule is evaluated automatically; "you tick it" means you confirm it yourself.
For each rule choose:
weight (● ●● ●●●) — how much it counts toward the percentage;
mandatory — no entry without it;
your own numbers — the EMA period, how many times above average the volume must be, the maximum stop in percent. The template numbers are just a starting point: adjust them to your system.
The "Entry allowed from …%" threshold — from what percentage of matching rules you allow yourself to enter (for example, 85% or 90%).

Your own rule in any words — the "Custom rule" item in the library.

The checklist window

To open it: the "✓ Checklist" button above any chart, "Entry checklist" in the left menu, or Alt+C. The window sits on top of the chart, order book and screener; you can drag it, collapse it into a badge with the percentage (—) or move it to another monitor (⧉ or drag the header outside MAMAY). On a separate monitor, the pin button keeps the window on top of all windows, even other programs.

A window opened from the button above a chart follows that chart: change the ticker or timeframe and the check is recalculated. Draw a "Long/Short position" on the chart and the entry, stop and target are filled in automatically.

Mode	How it works
Auto	Every 10 seconds MAMAY checks the rules it can: trend, levels, volume, RSI, MACD, candles, order book walls (crypto), stop and reward/risk by plan, your state from "Psychology and risk management". You tick the manual rules. Any automatic check can be overridden with a click
Manual	You tick everything. What MAMAY sees is shown as a hint but doesn't count toward the percentage — useful for training your eye

Clicking a rule cycles "yes" → "no" → "not ticked". Change the ticker or the side and the ticks reset: it's a new trade.

At the top — a ring with the percentage and the decision: "Entry allowed", "Wait" (what exactly is missing) or "Don't enter" (which mandatory rule is broken). The setup class A+/A/B/C is for reviews: A+ is 90% and above.

Decision journal

The "Entering" and "Skipping" buttons record what lined up at that minute. In Settings, below the checklists, there's a journal: how many times you entered following the checklist and how many times against it. After a month you'll see which entries bring results — and, honestly, how many times you broke your own rules.

A checklist doesn't predict the market. It stops you from entering when your own system says "no". That's what discipline is.