Trading plan · Advanced

Writing Clear Entry Criteria Rules

An entry rule is written well enough when a second person, handed the same chart, marks the same bar as you.

Last reviewed 15 September 2026 by the MarketPro research desk · Editorial policy

In short

Entry criteria are the objective conditions that must be true before you take a trade, written so a second person reading the same chart would mark the same bar. Each condition needs a yes-or-no answer: direction, level, trigger, quality of the trigger, and the disqualifiers that void an otherwise valid setup. Specify whether the signal requires a close or a touch.

What to remember

If a rule can be read two ways, it will be read in the moment as whichever way permits the trade.
Close-based and touch-based versions of the same rule are different strategies with different trade counts and costs.
Four independent conditions each present half the time coincide on 6.25% of bars, so stacking thins the sample fast.
The disqualifier list catches more avoidable losses than the trigger does. Scheduled events, abnormal spread, exposure already held.
Score the checklist before entry and keep the skipped ones, so you can see which condition ever changed a decision.

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The mark-up test for any entry rule

An entry rule is written well enough when a second person, handed the same chart and nothing else, marks the same bar as you. That is the whole standard. Everything below is a way of getting a rule to pass it.

Ambiguity in entry rules is not a cosmetic problem. It is where discipline breaks down, because a rule that can be read two ways will be read, in the moment, in whichever way permits the trade you already want. The rule then survives every review, since in hindsight it was satisfied.

One setup, scored line by line

Here is a rule set written to pass the mark-up test, applied to a single EUR/USD candidate at 09:00 London.

Condition	Specified as	This setup
Direction	Daily chart shows a higher high and higher low in the last 10 sessions	Yes
Level	Price at a 1-hour level marked before 08:00, tested twice or more since Monday	Yes, third test
Trigger	1-hour candle closes beyond the level by at least 0.2 times its own ATR	Closed 4 pips beyond, ATR 9, needs 1.8. Yes
Quality	Close in the upper third of the candle range	Close at 71% of range. Yes
Disqualifier	No tier-one release within 60 minutes	US CPI at 13:30. Yes, clear
Disqualifier	Spread no more than 1.5 times its 20-day average at that hour	1.1 pips against 1.0 average. Yes

Six lines, six yes-or-no answers, no interpretation required. Compare it with "enter on a strong break of a well-respected level in the direction of the trend", which contains the same intent and can be satisfied by almost anything after the fact.

Close or touch, and why the two are different strategies

The single most consequential detail in an entry rule is usually the least discussed one: does the signal need the bar to close, or is an intra-bar touch enough?

They are not variants of one rule, they are two rules producing different trade counts. A touch-based version fires on every wick that reaches the level, including the ones that reject and close back inside. A close-based version waits and takes a worse price in exchange for discarding those. Count both on the same six months of your own data and the touch column will typically hold roughly twice the signals, at a lower win rate and a smaller average winner, with more of the difference eaten by spread because there are more trades paying it.

Neither is correct in the abstract. What is not acceptable is leaving it unstated, because then you are running the touch rule on calm days and the close rule on nervous ones, and your records describe a strategy that does not exist.

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Confirming conditions stack, but they also thin the sample

Single-signal systems fire often and produce a high share of false positives. Adding a confirming condition raises the hit rate of the remaining signals, and this is the standard argument for stacking two or three.

The cost is sample size, and it compounds faster than people expect. If each of four conditions is independently present 50% of the time, all four coincide on 6.25% of bars. Add a fifth and you are at 3.1%. On a 1-hour chart that can mean a handful of trades a year, which is too few to evaluate and too few to stay disciplined around. Two or three conditions that each carry real information usually beat five that mostly restate one another, and combining indicators without stacking redundancy is covered further in the strategies guide.

The skip list carries more weight than the trigger

Most plans over-invest in the entry trigger and under-invest in the conditions that void an otherwise valid setup. The skip list is where the avoidable losses live.

Scheduled events. Name the releases that matter for your instrument and the window either side. "No new position 30 minutes before or 15 minutes after a tier-one release" is testable. "Avoid trading around news" is not.
Abnormal spread. Set a ceiling as a multiple of the normal spread at that hour, because a wide spread changes the arithmetic of a trade you already sized.
Level already spent. If your setup relies on a level, decide how many times it can be tested in a session before it stops counting as a level.
Exposure already taken. A valid setup in a currency you are already long is a size increase, not a new trade. Your plan's exposure cap decides it, not the chart.
You. Fatigue, a recent loss you are still annoyed about, twenty minutes before a meeting. These belong on the written list because in the moment they do not feel like disqualifiers.

Turning the paragraph into something you tick

Write the rules as a checklist with one line per condition, and score it before every entry rather than after. This has two effects that a paragraph does not. It forces you to state each condition as a question with a yes-or-no answer, which is the mark-up test applied in advance, and it produces a record.

Keep the scored checklist in your journal beside the trade, including the ones you scored and skipped. Over a few hundred trades that record answers questions no equity curve can: which condition is doing the work, which one never once changed the decision, and how often you took a trade that scored five out of six. The way each signal element maps onto an actual instruction is worked through in how to read a forex signal.

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Written and reviewed by the MarketPro research desk

MarketPro is a trading-signal and trading-education app operated by Harajuku Holdings LTD (Cyprus). Our signal desk publishes and tracks every trade idea in-app, and every page here is checked against the app's live behaviour before publishing. Last reviewed 15 September 2026. How we produce signals and content · About MarketPro

FAQ

Writing Clear Entry Criteria Rules: questions

How many confirming conditions should an entry rule have?

Two or three that each carry independent information usually work better than five that restate one another. The constraint is sample size: if each condition is present on half of all bars, four of them coincide on 6.25% of bars and five on 3.1%. On a 1-hour chart that can reduce you to a handful of trades a year, which is too few to evaluate the rule or to stay disciplined around.

Should my entry signal wait for the candle to close?

Either choice is defensible, but it has to be stated. A close-based rule discards the wicks that reach a level and reject, at the cost of a worse entry price. A touch-based rule fires on all of them and produces roughly twice the signals, usually at a lower win rate with more total spread paid. The failure is leaving it unspecified, because you will then apply the touch version on calm days and the close version on nervous ones.

What should disqualify a setup that otherwise looks valid?

A tier-one release inside your defined window, a spread above a stated multiple of its normal level at that hour, a level that has already been tested more times than your rule allows, and exposure you already hold in the same currency. Personal state belongs on the list too, because fatigue and irritation do not feel like disqualifiers at the moment they apply.

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