Preparation? Hmmm, I have approx 5 hours crammed of one minute bars to see if ES been trending hard during the night, if it has I can expect to fade the open, but my methods have to give signals to go the other way. I check to see what reports may have came out and which are due to come out after the open. I set a lines across for yesterdays' High/Low/Close as all three are like magnets, nice places to either extend/shorten targets. I will draw trendlines on 60 minute day session only, 60 minute 24 hour and daily ES charts as well. I normally like to get my goal for the day in first 30-40 minutes of the day session then come back for last 2 hours. I do like trading reports an hour before the ES open, but always let the market decide which way it wants to go and always use stop limit orders. If this report tears hard in one direction, I can expect the market to retrace some.