Most traders waste the first 20-30 minutes of every session doing the same manual tasks: checking which economic events are scheduled, pulling up overnight price action, reviewing key levels from the prior session, and scanning their watchlist for setup candidates. Done manually, this process is slow, inconsistent, and depends entirely on what you happen to notice.
A pre-market dashboard consolidates all of this into a single view, built from free data sources, with AI summaries that surface the most relevant information in seconds. This guide shows you exactly how to build one.
What a Pre-Market Dashboard Covers
A complete pre-market dashboard for an ICT/SMC trader covers five information layers:
- Economic calendar: All red and orange folder events for the session, with expected vs prior readings where available
- Overnight price action summary: What happened during the Asian session — session high/low, key levels broken or defended, current price vs prior day close
- HTF bias check: Current Daily and 4H structure for your primary instruments — trend direction, last significant OB/FVG levels, key liquidity targets
- Watchlist levels: Your pre-defined key levels for each instrument and whether price is near any of them
- Market sentiment context: Dollar index direction, VIX level, any significant moves in correlated markets overnight
The goal is to answer the three questions that matter at session open: What events could disrupt my setups today? What did price do overnight and what does it tell me about current bias? Where are the levels I’m watching and is price near any of them?
Option 1: The Google Sheets Dashboard (Free, 30-Minute Build)
The simplest effective dashboard is a Google Sheets file you update manually each morning, structured so all key information is visible on one screen without scrolling.
Sheet structure:
Row 1-3: Today’s date, current session (London / NY), current bias (Bullish / Bearish / Neutral) for each instrument
Row 5-15: Economic calendar table with columns: Time (UTC), Event, Currency, Impact (R/O/Y), Forecast, Prior, My Action (Reduce / Flat / Normal)
Row 17-30: Instrument table with columns: Instrument, Last Close, Asian High, Asian Low, Key OB Level, Key FVG Level, Current Bias, Setup Trigger
Use conditional formatting to highlight red-folder events in red, orange-folder in amber. Set up a Google Sheets formula to calculate the distance from current price to each key level (=ABS(B2-C2) where B is current price, C is key level) so you can see at a glance which instruments have price near a trigger zone.
This manual dashboard takes 5-10 minutes to populate each morning and produces a structured pre-session review that is significantly more thorough than informal chart-checking.
Option 2: The AI-Assisted Daily Brief (Free, Using Claude)
A more powerful approach uses Claude or ChatGPT to generate a structured daily brief from data you paste in each morning. This takes about 10 minutes to run and produces a more analytical output than a manually populated spreadsheet.
The workflow:
Step 1: Go to Investing.com Economic Calendar (or Forex Factory). Filter for today’s events, medium and high impact only. Select all and copy to clipboard.
Step 2: Go to TradingView and note the following for each of your instruments: current price, prior day close, Asian session high/low, nearest OB level, nearest FVG level.
Step 3: Open Claude and paste the following prompt with the data filled in:
DAILY BRIEF PROMPT:
You are my pre-market analyst. Generate a structured daily trading brief based on the following data.
ECONOMIC CALENDAR TODAY:
[paste calendar data]
INSTRUMENT DATA:
Gold: Price [X], Prior close [X], Asian high [X], Asian low [X], Key OB [X], Key FVG [X]
NQ: [same format]
BTC: [same format]
Please provide:
1. RED FLAG EVENTS: Any events today that require position reduction or flat before the release. Time and expected impact.
2. OVERNIGHT SUMMARY: What Asian session price action tells us about current bias for each instrument.
3. KEY LEVELS TO WATCH: Which instrument has price closest to a trigger zone. Calculate distance in pips/points.
4. SESSION BIAS: Bullish/Bearish/Neutral for each instrument based on the data provided.
5. TOP PRIORITY SETUP: Which instrument has the best alignment between HTF bias and current key level proximity.
The output is a structured, data-driven pre-session brief that takes 30 seconds to read and tells you exactly where to focus for the session.
Option 3: The TradingView Layout (Most Visual)
TradingView Pro allows you to save multi-chart layouts. Build a 6-chart layout with one chart per primary instrument (Gold, NQ, BTC, Oil, ES, DXY) all showing the 1H timeframe with your custom Pine Script indicators pre-loaded (Kill Zone highlighter, session range boxes, key level plots). Save this as your “Pre-Market Layout” and open it each morning.
Add the Economic Calendar widget to your TradingView dashboard (available under Widgets) so the day’s events are visible alongside your charts. This is the fastest to load each morning and the most visually useful for pattern-oriented traders.
Combine with the AI brief: Use the TradingView layout for visual context and the Claude brief for analytical summary. The two together take 10-12 minutes and produce a thorough pre-session picture.
Making the Dashboard a Habit
The dashboard only works if you use it every session without exception. The best way to ensure this: make it the physical first step of your trading routine, before any charts are opened for analysis. Dashboard first. Charts second. Trades third.
Time it for the first week. Most traders find the full process takes 8-15 minutes once the workflow is established. That investment produces better trade selection, fewer news-event disasters, and a clearer session plan that dramatically reduces impulsive entries.
Log one insight from the daily brief in your trading journal each session: the event you reduced size for, the level that triggered the session’s best setup, the instrument that had the clearest pre-market alignment. After 30 days, patterns emerge in which data points consistently predict your best and worst sessions.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should the pre-market routine take?
Target 15-20 minutes from start to having a clear session plan. If it’s taking longer, you’re over-analysing rather than systematising. The goal is a structured review that answers the three key questions (events, price action, key levels) efficiently — not an exhaustive deep dive that delays your session start and creates analysis paralysis. Build a template, follow it, and resist the temptation to keep adding more information sources until the process is already producing value.
What free data sources are best for the economic calendar?
Forex Factory (forexfactory.com) is the most widely used and most trader-friendly calendar. Filter for impact level, timezone, and currency pairs relevant to your instruments. Investing.com provides more detail on each release including historical data. TradingView’s built-in Economic Calendar widget is the most convenient if you’re already using TradingView. Any of these three work; the key is using one consistently rather than switching between them.
Should the dashboard cover all instruments or just my primary ones?
Start with your 3-4 primary trading instruments. Adding more creates information overload and slows the process. Once the habit is established (typically 4-6 weeks), expand to include correlated markets as context (DXY for Gold, VIX for NQ) rather than additional trading instruments. The dashboard is a decision-support tool, not a comprehensive market review. More data is not automatically better.
Can I automate the dashboard build completely?
Partially. The economic calendar can be scraped automatically using free scripts. TradingView’s data can be accessed via API for paid subscribers. Python scripts that pull this data and format it are relatively simple to build if you have basic coding skills. However, the manual 10-minute dashboard process produces most of the benefit without any automation complexity. Automate only after you’ve validated the manual process produces value — don’t build infrastructure for a habit you haven’t yet established.
What is the most important single element of the pre-market routine?
The economic calendar check. Missing a red-folder event that triggers a 150-pip move through your stop is one of the most preventable large losses in trading. Everything else in the pre-market routine is valuable but optional in a pinch. The calendar check is not. If you only have 2 minutes before a session starts, spend those 2 minutes confirming there are no major events in the next 2 hours and checking your exposure is sized appropriately. That one habit alone will prevent more damage than any chart pattern or confluence analysis.
▶ CONTINUE READING
Build your complete pre-session system:
▶ How to Backtest Your ICT Strategy Using AI Without Coding
▶ How to Build a Personal Trading Edge Report Using AI
▶ TradingView Pine Script for Beginners: Your First Indicator in 30 Minutes
The Complete Trader’s Edge
Chapter 16 covers the complete pre-session preparation framework including market context, scenario planning, and the psychological preparation ritual that shifts you from reactive to prepared before the session opens.
