This is the desk I trade the night session on. Every tool here runs during my sessions, and I have paid for every one of them myself, usually on a yearly or lifetime plan. The links are affiliate links (disclosure). Where I think something is optional for a newer trader, I say so.
How I think about tools. The chart decides where the trade is. The confirmation tools decide whether I am allowed to take it. A confirmation tool can veto a trade; it never creates one. You can start with a chart, a broker and a journal, and add the rest when you are consistent.
The chart
TradingView
What it does on my desk. Every chart I look at: the overnight session with its VWAP, the Globex initial balance, the session volume profile and the levels from the levels lesson. One 49-inch screen is nothing but this.
Always on. The one tool I would keep if I had to give up everything else. A paid plan is worth it for the extra charts and alerts; the free plan is enough to learn.
Order flow and pace
Bookmap
What it does on my desk. A heatmap of the resting orders in the book, with delta and the large orders highlighted. At night it is the fastest way to tell a real move from a thin-book flicker, and to see whether the liquidity at my level is real or has just been pulled.
Optional. I run ES and NQ side by side on a second 49-inch screen, delta on a five-minute and a session basis, heatmap filtered to the big orders. Optional until you are consistent; then one of the best things you can add.
TickStrike
What it does on my desk. An audible read of the pace of trading across the markets I watch: index futures, gold, crude, the VIX. When the pace changes, I hear it before I see it.
Always on. Runs whenever the market is open, even when I am not trading, for awareness. I do not trade without it.
News
Financial Juice
What it does on my desk. A real-time news squawk and headline feed. At night it is the difference between knowing a Bank of Japan headline just landed and finding out from your stop.
Always on. I am on the Elite tier and it runs whenever the market is open. I do not trade without it. The free tier is a reasonable place to start.
Journal and review
TradeZella
What it does on my desk. The trade journal: every fill imported, tagged by setup and grade, with the statistics that tell me which window and which setup actually pay. It is how I know the Tokyo hour is my best hour.
Always on. Open all day. The one-minute entry after each trade goes here, and the public journal is written from it.
Claude Code
What it does on my desk. After the close, not near it. I export the day’s trades and have it check the arithmetic, find the pattern in the losses, and argue with my read of the night. It checks math, not gut.
Optional. Optional, and never anywhere near order entry.
Broker and firms
Tradovate
What it does on my desk. Execution. Three DOMs on a vertical monitor, one per account, with the daily loss limit set in the platform before the first trade.
Always on. The platform that enforces my risk rules so I do not have to.
I trade funded accounts at Apex Trader Funding, Tradeify and Top One Futures, alongside my own cash accounts. Each firm has different rules about overnight holding, news and the 5 pm halt, and they change without notice, so read the current rules before you buy an evaluation. Where I have a referral code for a firm it will be listed here; today these are plain links.
Streaming
OneStream Live
What it does on my desk. What puts the streams on YouTube: scenes, the chart capture and the schedule, without running a heavy encoder on the trading machine.
Optional. Only matters if you want to stream. Setup took a few minutes.
Notes on individual tools
Trade the session your life actually allows.
The night session is a complete market. Learn how it moves, watch me trade it live, read the write-up the next morning, and if you want people who trade the same hours, there is a room for that.
Disclosure. Midnight Futures is an educational site written by Scott West, a private trader. Nothing here is financial advice, and trading futures carries a substantial risk of loss. Some links to the tools and prop firms I use are affiliate links: if you buy through them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure · Risk disclaimer