Module 2G
The daily bias protocol
Leads into 2H, which turns the bias into a written plan you committed to before the open.
This curriculum's own.
Everything in Phase 2 has assumed you already had one
The window requires a bias. The timeframe stack requires a bias. The liquidity map is meaningless without a directional expectation to make it meaningful.
And nothing so far has told you how to build one from scratch, every day, systematically.
This module fills that gap. Ten to fifteen minutes before the open. A reader who runs it arrives with a position. A reader who skips it is guessing and calling it discretion.
- Daily bias protocol
- The repeatable pre-session ritual that produces a directional read.
- Bias statement
- One sentence with direction, reason, profile position, expected opening type and a conditional trigger.
- Formed versus vague
- A formed bias has all five of those. A lean has none of them.
- Overnight range
- The high and low traded overnight. Fresh liquidity pools, and often the morning's magnets.
- Bias as hypothesis
- Something the market confirms or invalidates, not a prediction to defend.
Where the 1H went
2C gave you five timeframes. This protocol uses the Daily, the 4H and the 15m, and you should notice the 1H is missing.
That is deliberate and it follows directly from what each timeframe is for. The Daily and the 4H produce your direction, and that is bias work. The 15m is where you mark locations, which is preparation. The 1H is the chart you work on once the session is live, and there is nothing to read on it before there is a session.
So the protocol is not a shorter version of the stack. It is the part of the stack that can be done before anything is moving.
Step one: check the calendar
Before looking at a chart. Identify any high-impact events scheduled today: rate decisions and central bank speakers, inflation data, payrolls, GDP, and anything red-flagged between the open and mid-afternoon.
The decision rule is binary. A high-impact event inside the window, or within thirty minutes of it, suspends the model for that window. No trade. Mark it, note it, close the chart.
No exceptions for "it might be fine" or "that was already priced in."
This is not timidity. During a macro release, price is driven by a binary fundamental catalyst rather than by the liquidity sequencing this method reads, so the sequence you are trained on becomes unreliable and the risk is unquantifiable. You are not avoiding volatility. You are declining to use a tool outside the conditions it works in.
Step two: the Daily
Where is price in the macro range? Find the most recent significant high and low. Upper third is premium, lower third is discount, middle is equilibrium. A bullish bias is supported from discount, a bearish one from premium.
What is the structure? Higher highs and higher lows, lower highs and lower lows, or ranging between two levels. This is your macro anchor.
Are there nearby daily gaps or order blocks? Mark them. If today opens near a daily bullish gap, that is context for a long.
What did yesterday's candle do? Expansion, retracement, reversal or consolidation. Then apply 2D's sequencing rule and ask what can follow it.
Step three: the 4H, which is where direction comes from
This is the anchor step and the one that produces your answer.
Is the 4H aligned with the Daily? If the Daily is bullish and the 4H is making lower highs, that is a conflict. The Daily is the draw, the 4H is the direction, and entry timing waits for the 4H rather than overriding it. Do not take a long while the 4H is still in a bearish leg because the Daily says up.
Where is the most recent 4H displacement? Find the last large expansion candle. Where did it come from, and what gap did it leave? That is where price is likely to return before the next move.
What are the nearest 4H liquidity pools above and below? Mark them. These become the session's likely targets.
Step four: the 15m, and mapping locations
Where did overnight trade? Mark the overnight high and low. These are fresh pools, and equal highs or lows overnight are especially significant because they are exactly the kind of obvious cluster 1B told you gets attacked.
Where is price relative to the overnight range and to prior value? At the top of the range, lean toward a sell-side sweep or a premium rejection. At the bottom, a buy-side sweep or discount accumulation. In the middle, lower conviction, be more selective. And note where price opened relative to prior value, inside or outside value, inside or outside range, because that is the input the opening type read needs.
Any unfilled gaps from overnight? Return targets. Note them.
Where is price against VWAP? Above is a short-term bullish lean, below is bearish. VWAP is a calibration tool, not a bias.
Then map the full location stack. Buy-side and sell-side pools, prior value levels, VWAP and its bands, untouched gaps, unmitigated order blocks, round numbers.
These are map features, not entries. When price arrives at one during the window, the flow read decides whether to act.
Step five: write the sentence
Before you close the chart, write one sentence.
My bias today is [direction] because [daily structure, 4H context, overnight position, profile position], and I expect price to [target which liquidity, at roughly what level] during the window if [the condition that confirms the model is activating].
If you cannot complete that sentence with specifics, your bias is not formed. Do not trade. Mark it a no-read day and sit out.
This bias is initial. It gets refined or invalidated by the opening type read in the first thirty minutes. The premarket bias gives you a direction. The opening type tells you which playbook to bring.
The directional read this produces is what the setup modules call the intended direction: the side price is ultimately being pulled toward, and the thing the window reads for expansion.
What a formed bias looks like
A reversal-playbook day:
Daily is bullish, price came off a daily gap yesterday and closed strong. 4H made a higher low and is trending up. Overnight traded a tight range building a clean pool above the high. Open above prior value area high, inside range, near the value high. Bias is long, but I expect a rejection-reverse signature in the open: a morning probe up to sweep the overnight high, then a reversal back down through the open. In the window I will be looking for the long setup after that probe sweeps and reverses. Reversal playbook.
A continuation-playbook day:
Daily strongly bullish, 4H in a clean uptrend. Overnight extended above prior value and held. Open outside value and outside range to the upside, delta trending up. Initial read is a drive day. Continuation playbook. Looking for the first pullback to consolidate just below the open, then trap-and-acceleration through it toward the next reference. Path beyond that reference is open, no major high volume node before it.
Not a formed bias:
Looks like it could go up today. I will see what happens at 10.
The difference is not confidence. It is specificity.
A formed bias has a direction, a reason, a profile position, an expected opening type, a chosen playbook and a conditional trigger. A vague lean has a direction and a feeling, and the reason that matters is that a lean cannot be wrong. There is nothing in it precise enough to be contradicted, which means it will survive any session and teach you nothing.
When the bias is wrong
A bias is a hypothesis, not a prediction. The market will confirm it or it will not.
If the window opens and price moves hard against you, sweeping the side you did not expect and shifting structure the other way, the bias has been invalidated.
The correct response. Do not force the original trade. Write down that the bias was wrong and what the market showed instead. If the opposing setup is clear and fully valid within the window, it can be taken, but only on a complete sequence in the new direction. Not an impulsive flip.
A wrong bias handled correctly is not a failure. It is data. A wrong bias that produces a forced trade in the original direction is the error, and those two get recorded very differently.
Self-check
Grade yourself honestly
1. Why does the protocol read the Daily and the 4H but not the 1H?
A correct answer separates bias work from working. The Daily and 4H produce direction, which can be settled before anything moves. The 1H is the chart you use during the session, and there is nothing on it to read before there is a session. If you thought it was an oversight, reread the stack in 2C.
2. Daily says bullish, 4H is making lower highs. What do you do?
A correct answer does not take the long yet. The Daily is the draw and the 4H is the direction, so entry timing waits for the 4H rather than overriding it. Note this is a different question from 2C's, and the answers are consistent: the anchor decides, and here it is telling you to wait rather than to reverse.
3. What makes "looks like it could go up today" different from a bias?
A correct answer says specificity, and the sharper version is that a lean cannot be wrong. There is nothing in it precise enough to be contradicted, so it survives every session and teaches you nothing. A bias names what would falsify it.
4. High-impact data lands twenty minutes before the window and the number comes in exactly as expected. Do you trade?
A correct answer is no, and it does not reason about the data. The rule is binary and it is about the sequence being unreliable, not about the number being surprising. "It was already priced in" is the most common way this rule gets broken.
If question 4 gave you any hesitation
That hesitation is worth more than the answer. The calendar rule is the easiest rule in the curriculum to follow on a quiet morning and the hardest on a morning when your bias is clean and you can see the setup forming. It is written as binary specifically so that it is not available for negotiation at the moment you most want to negotiate it.
One rep before you continue
Five bias statements, then check them
Run the full protocol on five replay days. For each, write the Step 5 sentence before playing the session forward. Direction, reason, profile position, expected opening type, conditional trigger.
Then play it and answer two things. Did the read point the right way. And more importantly, was the bias confirmed or invalidated, and would you have released it correctly?
Five statements, ten answers. The second question is the rep. Being right is pleasant and being able to let go of a wrong bias without forcing a trade is the actual skill, and you can only practise it on the days you were wrong.
What the next module does with this
2G produces a direction. 2H turns it into a written plan, and that is the last module in Phase 2 for a reason.
Everything in this phase has been building toward a document you complete before the open and then execute against, rather than a set of ideas you hold in your head and revise under pressure. It is also the thing Phase 4 works on. Without it, the psychology phase has nothing to operate on but your memory, and your memory of a trade is written by whoever you were after it closed.
Log the module
Where did you get stuck?
Not a test, and nothing is marked. This is the routine you would run every morning, so whether it feels workable in ten minutes is genuinely useful to know. About a minute.