Table of Contents
Chris Capre sits down for a practical, no-nonsense conversation about how a trader survives shifting markets. In this YouTube interview, he explains why he expanded beyond forex into stocks and options, and why volatility, liquidity, and real order-flow tools changed his playbook. You’ll hear how Chris frames professional development in stages—from getting consistent to scaling size, then broadening asset classes—plus how he thinks about risk as the first job of any trader.
In this piece, you’ll learn the core of Chris Capre’s strategy: read order flow to drive entries, lean on volume and VWAP to confirm moves, use scanners to find high-interest names, and deploy options to profit when markets trend—or go nowhere. We’ll cover his rationale for moving into higher-volatility instruments, how he times rotations (small caps vs. large caps), and how selling or buying options lets you shape risk, capture time decay, and trade volatility directly—all in a way a beginner can copy step-by-step.
Chris Capre Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Market Focus & Daily Prep
You can’t trade everything, so Chris narrows the universe fast and shows up with a plan. The idea is to scan for pockets of volatility and liquidity, then build a simple bias so every decision has context.
- Build a watchlist of 10–20 names or FX pairs with above-average volume and clean intraday structure.
- Favor instruments with an ATR above their 20-day average or IV rank > 30 if trading options.
- Define one macro bias per instrument before the open using a higher-timeframe structure (H1/H4 for FX, 60/240-min for stocks/futures).
- Mark two key zones: prior day high/low and session VWAP ± one deviation as your first areas of interest.
- If the bias and opening drive disagree, stand down for 15–30 minutes; no trades until structure resolves.
Price Action & Order Flow Read
Direction is only half the job; the edge is recognizing when participation confirms the move. Use price action to spot intent, then use order flow to verify real commitment.
- Trade away from value when price accepts above/below VWAP with cumulative delta confirming (higher highs + rising delta for longs).
- Prioritize breakouts that retest: enter on the first pullback to broken structure or VWAP tap after acceptance.
- Avoid breakouts where delta diverges or volume dries up—no confirmation, no trade.
- On ranges, fade edges only if trapped traders are visible (failed breaks with sharp delta snapbacks).
- If two consecutive 1-minute candles move through your level without volume expansion, cancel the setup.
Setup Criteria (Go/No-Go Checklist)
This is the quick filter that keeps you from forcing trades. All boxes must be checked; otherwise, pass.
- Higher-timeframe bias aligned with intraday trend (swing structure, not just a single candle).
- Clear level: prior high/low, VWAP, value area edge, or clean swing level tested ≥ 2 times.
- Fresh catalyst helps (news, earnings, data release) OR strong relative strength/weakness vs. peers or DXY when trading FX.
- Risk ≤ 1R to first target with minimum 1.8R expected to the next obvious level.
- Spread/fees acceptable: if costs > 10% of stop distance, skip.
Entry Triggers
Entries should be mechanical so you’re not guessing. Let price prove the bid/offer and then step in with predefined risk.
- Break-retest: place a limit at the retest of the broken level or VWAP, with a stop just beyond the invalidation wick.
- Reversal trap: enter after a failed breakout that closes back inside the range with delta flipping hard in the opposite direction.
- Momentum continuation: enter on a minor pullback that holds the 9/20 EMA cluster while cumulative delta remains in trend.
- For FX, time entries near session opens (London/NY) when liquidity spikes; avoid the dead zone between sessions.
- If price moves > 0.7R in your favor before fill, cancel the order—don’t chase.
Risk Sizing & Trade Limits
Staying in the game is job #1. Chris treats risk like a fixed cost and lets the math compound.
- Risk is a fixed fraction per trade (0.25%–0.5% of account for day trades; 0.5%–1% for swing).
- Daily loss limit = 2R; hit it and stop trading for the day.
- Max concurrent exposure: three correlated positions or 3% total risk—whichever is first.
- No adding to losers—ever. Scale only when trade is +1R and a new structure level forms to define risk on the add.
- Cut size in half during low-volatility regimes (ATR below 20-day average).
Stop Placement & Targets
Your stop tells you where you’re wrong; targets pay you for being right. Use structure and volatility, not hope.
- Stops: beyond the invalidation wick/swing plus a volatility buffer (0.2–0.3× current ATR on your execution timeframe).
- First target (T1): next liquidity pool—prior high/low, value edge, or session high/low.
- Move to break-even only after price closes beyond your entry level and re-tests successfully; not before.
- Trail using VWAP or the 20 EMA in trend; exit on a clean close against it with a delta flip.
- If risk/reward compresses below 1.2R after entry (due to chop), scratch the trade.
Options Tactics for Equity Names
When direction is messy, options let you trade volatility and time decay. Keep structures tight and risk defined.
- Trend trades: buy debit spreads (call for uptrends, put for downtrends) when IV rank < 25 and price accepts beyond value.
- Mean-revert or range: sell credit spreads at the edges when IV rank > 40 and price rejects value on rising volume.
- Avoid earnings unless it’s a planned volatility play; if trading earnings, use defined-risk structures sized at half normal risk.
- 30–45 DTE for credit spreads; manage at 50% max profit or when price tags the opposing value edge.
- Roll losers only if the thesis still holds, and rolling reduces total risk while preserving break-even.
Session Management & Trade Review
Consistency lives in your routine. The session plan keeps your head clear; the review turns experience into edge.
- Pre-market: write a one-sentence hypothesis per instrument and a single “invalid if…” condition.
- Intraday: cap screen time by blocks (e.g., 90 minutes at open, 60 minutes mid-session, 60 minutes into close).
- Post-market: log every trade with entry reason, invalidation level, delta/volume context, and a screenshot.
- Tag outcomes by setup type; if a setup underperforms for 20 trades, pause it and re-test before resuming.
- Weekly: calculate expectancy (Win% × AvgWin − (1 − Win%) × AvgLoss) per setup and reallocate size to the top two.
FX-Specific Adjustments
Currencies flow around sessions and macro impulses. Lean into session liquidity and relative strength to stack odds.
- Build a simple currency strength matrix from the top five pairs; only trade the strongest vs. the weakest.
- Prioritize London and early New York for entries; avoid late NY unless there’s a fresh catalyst.
- Use DXY/US10Y as context for USD pairs; if they diverge from your bias, size down or pass.
- For swing FX, confirm with daily closes and position off H4 levels with 1–2× larger stops and half the size.
Stocks/Futures Execution Nuances
Equities and index futures reward relative strength and clean rotations. Follow where the flow is heaviest.
- In the first 30 minutes, sort the watchlist by RVOL and gap size; trade leaders only.
- Respect VWAP: in trend days, buy pullbacks to VWAP with higher lows and rising delta; fade only on range days with rejection.
- Don’t short strong day-one momentum leaders before they fail VWAP and lose delta.
- For futures, anchor value to the prior session and overnight high/low; trade acceptance/rejection at those levels.
Psychology & Process Discipline
Edge dies when emotions drive decisions. Keep rules visible, breathe, and take the next best trade—not every trade.
- Pre-trade checklist: bias, level, trigger, risk, target, and invalidation. If any item is missing, skip.
- Use a two-strike rule: two process mistakes end the session regardless of P&L.
- After a large win or loss, require one full 5-minute reset before placing the next order.
- Rate each trade 1–5 on process quality; only increase size after 20 trades averaging ≥ 4.
Scaling & Portfolio Construction
As skill compounds, size should too—but methodically. Chris expands by strategy and asset, not random bets.
- Scale size only after 50 trades with positive expectancy and a max drawdown < 5R on the setup.
- Cap total strategy risk: no more than 50% of your weekly risk budget allocated to one setup type.
- Diversify by time horizon (intra-day + swing) and instrument (FX + equities/options) to smooth the equity curve.
- Reduce size by 30–50% after a 6R drawdown and trade only your A-setups until back to highs.
Playbook Maintenance & Backtesting
A living playbook keeps you honest and adaptive. Treat setups like products: either they perform, or they’re iterated.
- Keep one page per setup: context, trigger, invalidation, management rules, and 3–5 exemplar charts.
- Re-backtest quarterly: 100–200 recent samples per setup; adjust rules only if expectancy improves with similar drawdown.
- Sunset any setup with negative expectancy over 50+ trades unless a specific, testable fix is identified.
- Maintain a “bench” list of tweaks to test (e.g., different VWAP deviations, alternate delta thresholds) with a small size only.
Size Risk First: Fixed R, daily loss cap, survive volatility.
Chris Capre is ruthless about protecting capital before chasing gains. He sizes every trade to a fixed R so outcomes are apples-to-apples, not guesswork driven by emotion. A daily loss cap stops the bleed and preserves decision quality for tomorrow’s setups. When volatility contracts or spreads widen, he automatically scales down in size rather than forcing the same risk in worse conditions.
He treats each entry as a business expense with a pre-agreed maximum and never adds to losers. If the first target isn’t at least 1.5–2R with a clean structure, he passes and waits for better math. By standardizing risk and capping the day, Chris keeps his edge consistent across market regimes and lets wins compound without letting one bad session spiral.
Read Order Flow, Not Headlines: Let VWAP and Delta Confirm
Chris Capre emphasizes that headlines are noise unless participation backs the move. He builds context with VWAP and waits for the price to move above or below it before committing. Cumulative delta needs to trend with price—higher highs plus rising delta for longs, lower lows plus falling delta for shorts. If price pokes through a level without volume expansion or delta follow-through, he stands down.
On entries, Chris prefers the break-retest: let price clear a level, then buy the first pullback that holds VWAP with delta still supportive. He avoids fading strength until VWAP fails and delta flips, signaling trapped traders. Divergence is a red flag—if price pushes new highs while delta stalls, he cuts size or scratches. The rule is simple: let order flow verify intent, then trade the retest, not the headline.
Diversify By Instrument, Strategy, and Duration To Smooth Drawdowns
Chris Capre spreads risk across instruments so one market can’t wreck the week. He’ll rotate between FX majors, index futures, and select equities depending on where volatility and liquidity are best. The mix includes a couple of “trend follow” plays and a couple of “mean reversion” plays, so the book isn’t one-note. He also staggers holding periods—intraday for the hot tape, swing for a cleaner, higher-timeframe structure.
When conditions shift, Chris rebalances instead of forcing the same setup everywhere. If FX is choppy, he shifts risk to options on strong stocks; if equities are messy, he leans back into cleaner currency pairs. Each position has an independent thesis and target, so correlations don’t secretly stack. The result is a smoother equity curve where small wins and small losses offset, and drawdowns are controlled by design.
Use Options To Trade Volatility: Debit For Trends, Credit For Ranges
Chris Capre treats options as a clean way to express direction and volatility without blowing up risk. When the tape trends and IV is modest, he buys defined-risk debit spreads so theta burn is manageable while keeping upside. He times entries on acceptance beyond VWAP, then sets targets near obvious liquidity pools like prior highs. If price closes back under VWAP or momentum stalls, he cuts rather than “hoping” theta doesn’t bite.
When markets chop and IV is pumped, Chris sells credit spreads at the edges so time decay works for him. He prefers 30–45 DTE, manages winners around 50% max profit, and rolls or exits if the thesis breaks instead of widening risk. Earnings are a special case—defined-risk only and half size because gap risk is real. The whole point, according to Chris Capre, is to let structure and volatility decide the option structure, not feelings.
Process Over Prediction: Pre-Trade Checklist, Post-Market Review, Relentless Iteration
Chris Capre builds consistency by eliminating guesswork before the first click. He runs a simple pre-trade checklist: bias, key level, trigger, risk, target, invalidation—if any item is fuzzy, he passes. He writes a one-sentence hypothesis and a clear “invalid if…” so he knows exactly when to stop. This keeps his attention on execution quality rather than outcome chasing.
After the close, Chris grades each trade on process, not P&L, and logs context like VWAP interaction and delta behavior. He tags setups, tracks expectancy by type, and pauses anything that slips below standards for twenty trades. Wins don’t escape review—he asks whether the same result would repeat with the same rules. That feedback loop lets Chris Capre iterate ruthlessly and scale only what actually works.
Chris Capre’s core lesson is simple: price is downstream of actual orders, so build your edge around order flow—not stories. He treats common order-flow patterns as universal across FX, stocks, crypto, and commodities, which is why the same structures and read of participation transfer cleanly between markets. That lens explains his heavy use of granular tools like VWAP, level 2, time & sales, open interest, and even dark-pool flow—because they reveal who’s actually transacting, not just what a chart “looks” like.
A second takeaway is adaptability: when volatility regimes shift, the playbook shifts with them. He moved beyond the narrower volatility and menu of FX to a broader universe in equities, where more instruments and bigger daily ranges create more opportunity—as long as you still anchor every decision to objective flow. The mantra is that volatility is elastic and strategies come and go, but skills—reading flow, defining risk, executing cleanly—don’t die.
Third, risk sits on top. Chris frames his “first job” as controlling risk before extracting alpha, and that shows up in how he standardizes position sizing, lets structure define invalidation, and passes when participation doesn’t confirm. All of it keeps him adaptive to the market in front of him rather than defending predictions about the one he wishes existed.
Finally, options are a practical extension of the same philosophy: they let him express a view on direction or volatility with defined risk and, when paired with stock, neutralize parts of the exposure. He’ll trade options outright for leverage or combine them with stock to shape payoff, and he’s explicit that options open up “up, down, or sideways” profit paths that spot alone can’t offer. In other words, pick the instrument that best aligns with the flow you’re seeing and the risk you want to take—then let the structure and participation do the talking.
