Table of Contents
Roger Khoury sits down to unpack his “market vulnerability analysis,” a forecasting-first approach he built after years of chasing strategies that worked—until they didn’t. In this interview, Roger explains how he measures eight forces of supply and demand and rolls them into a simple “fuel gauge” style readout so traders can spot when conditions are likely to work against them and stand aside instead of forcing trades.
You’ll learn Roger Khoury’s core idea—filter out weak conditions before you think about setups—plus how he blends fundamentals, technicals, liquidity/flow, sentiment, volatility, and macro into one clear read so you’re not blindsided by regime shifts. We’ll cover his risk stance (keep position risk small, compound steadily), why the method is market-agnostic (works across stocks, futures, FX, crypto), and how to adapt from day trades to longer holds using the same vulnerability lens—all in plain English you can apply on your next session.
Roger Khoury Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
The Core Edge: Forecast Risk Before You Trade
Most traders hunt for setups; Roger Khoury hunts for conditions. His edge is simple to say, hard to do: forecast where the market is most vulnerable to working against you—and only trade when that vulnerability is low. Think of it as a “green light / yellow light / red light” pre-filter that lets you avoid the chop and lean in when the wind’s at your back.
- Define a pre-trade “vulnerability score” from 0–10; only place trades ≤3.
- If conditions shift mid-trade to ≥5, reduce size or exit—no debate.
- Never escalate from no-trade to full size in one step; probe with ¼ size first.
- If you can’t explain in one sentence why vulnerability is low, you don’t have an edge.
The Eight Forces That Drive Price (Your Daily Scan)
Before looking at a chart pattern, Roger assesses the forces that actually move supply and demand. The goal isn’t to predict news; it’s to know when these forces align or conflict so you can throttle risk accordingly. Score each force, then make a go/no-go call.
- Macro fundamentals: Are growth/inflation trends or major data (CPI, jobs) supportive or hostile to your market today?
- Geopolitics/newsflow: Any active headlines or scheduled events that can blindside your trade window?
- Liquidity: Session depth (open/close, holidays, rollover), spreads, and book thickness—thin markets raise vulnerability.
- Sentiment/positioning: Are retail/CTAs/options-flows one-sided? Extreme consensus = fragile.
- Volatility regime: Are we expanding or compressing? Trade smaller in expansion; fade less in compression breaks.
- Intermarket flows: Dollar, rates, credit, commodities, and sector leaders—do they confirm your idea?
- Structural zones: Fresh supply/demand imbalances (prior impulse origins, untested zones) nearby?
- Seasonality/time effects: Month-end, quarter-start, option expiry, and time-of-day tendencies aiding or fighting you?
The Pre-Trade Checklist (Green-Light Rules)
Here’s how Roger turns that scan into an immediate decision. Keep it binary and mechanical so you aren’t negotiating with yourself after the fact.
- Require ≥6 of 8 forces in alignment with your idea to risk full planned size.
- Alignment <6/8: trade half-size or pass; conflict on ≥3 forces: pass outright.
- Spread ≤ average and ATR not spiking >1.5× recent norm before you enter.
- Place trade only in the highest-liquidity 90-minute window of your market.
- If a high-impact event is <30 minutes away, defer the trade.
Market & Timeframe Selection (Where This Works Best)
Roger’s approach is market-agnostic, but he favors clean liquidity and consistent sessions. Choose products and timeframes that express the same read without added noise.
- Prefer index futures, liquid FX majors, large-cap equities, liquid commodities; avoid thin single names.
- For intraday, use a higher-timeframe read (H1/H4/D) to set bias; execute on M5–M15 for precision.
- Swing trades: align D/4H bias; time entries on 30m–1h pullbacks.
- If the higher-timeframe and execution-timeframe disagree, skip—vulnerability is elevated.
Entry Triggers (After Vulnerability Goes Green)
Once conditions are favorable, entries should be simple confirmations of demand/supply imbalance—not complex indicator stacks. Roger prioritizes fresh imbalances and momentum acceptance.
- Buy only on the first pullback into a fresh demand zone that caused the most recent impulse; sell the mirror at supply.
- Require acceptance: one close back above/below the zone plus in-range follow-through (no immediate rejection).
- If price tags your zone and stalls >3 candles without follow-through, scratch or stand aside.
- Never chase a breakout; re-enter on the retest or leave it.
Risk Sizing & Daily Guardrails
Consistency comes from uniform risk and strict stop discipline. Roger caps downside while letting upside breathe when conditions stay favorable.
- Risk 0.25%–0.5% per trade; hard-stop at the invalidated zone, not a round number.
- Daily max drawdown: 1% or 3R, whichever comes first; stop trading for the day when hit.
- Two losers in a row: cut next position size by 50% or pause until conditions re-align.
- If slippage widens beyond your test data, halve the size immediately for the session.
Take-Profit Logic & Trade Management
Targets are set by opposing imbalance and evolving vulnerability. Size comes off into strength; the rest rides as long as conditions stay green.
- Scale 50% at the next opposing zone or 1R–1.5R, whichever is nearer.
- Move stop to −0.2R (not breakeven) after first scale to reduce stop-outs by spread noise.
- Trail remaining size behind last confirmed swing only while vulnerability ≤3; exit on uptick to ≥4.
- If a high-impact event approaches within 20 minutes, flatten to runner-only or exit.
When to Stand Aside (Professional Patience)
Roger’s edge shines as much in the trades he doesn’t take. Neutral or conflicted conditions are profits you didn’t donate.
- Overlapping sessions with news whipsaws and a thin book? Stand down.
- Price inside prior day’s value with shrinking ATR? Trade smaller or not at all.
- If your pre-trade scan yields mixed signals across intermarkets, skip the first two setups—trade the third only if alignment improves.
Building the Vulnerability Score (Repeatable & Measurable)
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Turn the eight forces into a repeatable number so your process survives mood swings.
- Score each force 0 (hostile), 1 (neutral), 2 (supportive); sum to a 0–16 composite.
- Green light = 12–16, yellow = 9–11, red = ≤8; risk tiers map to 100%, 50%, 0% of planned size.
- Log composite score, trade outcome, and MAE/MFE for every trade; review weekly for drift.
Multi-Timeframe Alignment (Bias → Setup → Trigger)
The method nests top-down context into a bottom-up entry. If any link breaks, you don’t force it.
- Bias: higher timeframe aligned with at least 6/8 forces → long or short.
- Setup: price approaches a fresh imbalance zone with liquidity present (no holiday/rollover).
- Trigger: confirmation candle closes back through the zone with momentum; enter on the next pullback.
Practical Session Rules (Intraday)
Time of day changes the character of moves. Roger treats session structure as part of vulnerability, not an afterthought.
- Focus on the first 90 minutes and the last 60 minutes of the primary session.
- Avoid initiating new positions in the midday lull unless composite score = 16/16.
- For FX, prefer London open → NY morning overlap; reduce size after NY lunch.
Playbook Maintenance (Keep It Current)
Markets evolve. Your playbook should too—without reinventing your edge every week.
- Once per month, re-validate which forces carry the most weight for your products; update your weights, not your principles.
- Archive screenshots of “A-grade” and “D-grade” examples with composite scores and results.
- If a force stops adding predictive value for four consecutive weeks, re-test its definition before removing it.
Psychology That Serves the Method
Forecasting vulnerability is useless if you override it. The mindset is systematic patience plus small, repeatable bets.
- Commit to a minimum sample of 50 trades before judging results; no system shopping.
- Treat “No Trade” as a win when conditions are yellow/red; log it like a profitable outcome.
- If you catch yourself rationalizing a trade with more words than your checklist, it’s a pass.
Optional Automation & Alerts (Lightweight, Not Blind)
Tools can help you notice when conditions flip, but discretion still lives in the checklist.
- Create alerts for intermarket confirms (e.g., index vs. yields vs. dollar) crossing preset thresholds.
- Set volatility alerts when ATR shifts >1.25× its 20-period norm—size down automatically.
- Use a template to auto-score the eight forces; you still decide go/no-go.
Forecast Vulnerability First: Trade Only When Conditions Align
Roger Khoury doesn’t chase entries; he filters conditions until the odds are friendly. He treats the market like weather—some days are picnic days, some days demand a raincoat, and some days you just stay home. Before he even thinks about a setup, he gauges how likely the market is to work against him. If vulnerability reads high, he simply passes and protects capital.
When the read flips favorable, Roger Khoury moves from observer to operator with clarity. He wants multiple confirming factors—clean liquidity, cooperative intermarket signals, and a volatility regime that won’t whip him out. Only then does he put on a probe position and let price prove him right before adding. The result is a calm, rules-first process that trades alignment, not hope.
Risk Small, Scale In: Volatility-Governed Position Sizing Rules
Roger Khoury keeps initial risk tiny and lets volatility set the throttle. He’ll open with a probe rather than a full send, sizing the starter position to a fraction of one percent of equity. The stop goes beyond the invalidation level, not a round number, and the distance-to-stop determines how many units he can safely carry. If the current ATR is stretched, he cuts the size further so a normal wiggle doesn’t equal a day’s damage.
As the price confirms, Roger Khoury scales in only when the volatility picture and liquidity stay cooperative. He adds on acceptance after pullbacks, never into a spike, and trims quickly if spreads widen or the regime flips from compression to expansion. A daily max drawdown cap and “two-losses, size-down” rule prevent a cold streak from spiraling. If the vulnerability read rises mid-trade, he reduces size or exits—because protecting the engine matters more than proving a point.
One Playbook, Many Markets: Diversify by Underlying, Strategy, Duration
Roger Khoury runs the same vulnerability-first playbook across asset classes, then diversifies the expression of that edge. Instead of stacking five similar trades in one index, he spreads exposure across uncorrelated underlyings—an FX major, an equity index future, maybe a commodity trend—so a single theme doesn’t dominate his P&L. When one market is choppy, another often offers cleaner structure, and Roger Khoury would rather take the clear lane than force a setup where conditions are mixed.
He also diversifies by strategy and duration without abandoning the core rules. If the daily timeframe reads strong but intraday is noisy, he’ll hunt a swing entry and let time do the heavy lifting; if the higher timeframe is neutral but the session alignment is green, he’ll day-trade the window and flatten. A pullback-to-imbalance entry might pair with a separate breakout-retest in a different product, both sized by volatility and governed by the same exit logic. The goal is a portfolio of small, independent bets—each validated by the playbook—so consistency comes from breadth and discipline, not prediction.
Mechanics Over Prediction: Simple Entry Triggers, Strict Exit Protocols
Roger Khoury keeps the entry rules boring on purpose so he can execute them under stress. He looks for a price to return to a fresh imbalance, print acceptance back through it, and then he buys the first controlled pullback; for shorts, he flips the logic at supply. No chasing breakouts, no second-guessing—if there’s no clean retest and acceptance, Roger Khoury waits.
Exits are even more mechanical. First scale comes at the opposing imbalance or roughly 1R–1.5R, then the stop bumps to a small negative buffer so spread noise doesn’t tag him out. He trails the remainder behind the most recent confirmed swing only while conditions stay favorable; if vulnerability rises, he cuts without ceremony. Sudden spread widening, event risk inside twenty minutes, or a failed acceptance candle all trigger the same response: flatten or reduce, protect the account, move on.
Process Discipline: Daily Guardrails, Event Filters, No-Trade Decisions
Roger Khoury treats discipline as part of the edge, not a personality trait. Each session starts with a vulnerability read, a defined trade window, and a hard daily loss cap that ends the day automatically. If two losses arrive back-to-back, he halvesthe size or stands down until alignment returns. Major events act as gates: if a high-impact release is inside thirty minutes, Roger Khoury won’t initiate; if it’s inside twenty minutes while in a trade, he pares to a runner or exits.
The calendar and tape dictate tempo. He emphasizes the first ninety minutes and the last hour of the primary session, avoids initiating during dead zones, and won’t trade when spreads or slippage deviate from his tested norms. No-trade is logged like a win when conditions are yellow or red, reinforcing the idea that protection is production. By enforcing these guardrails the same way every day, Roger Khoury converts process into predictable behavior—and predictable behavior into durable results.
Roger Khoury’s core lesson is to forecast vulnerability first—measure the pressures that build before adverse moves, just like weather systems, and only take trades when those pressures favor your outcome. When the oncoming environment looks poor, the right move is to stand aside rather than hunt every setup you see. This shift from chasing opportunities to avoiding likely losses is the mindset change that underpins his entire approach.
He operationalizes that mindset by scoring the eight forces of supply and demand—from liquidity and order flow to macro/geopolitics—and rolling them into a simple aggregate read so you’re not blindsided by regime shifts. If those forces aren’t aligned, he keeps risk minimal or skips the trade; when they synchronize, he engages with clear triggers and lets price confirm. The point isn’t to predict headlines; it’s to know when the backdrop can actually carry your trade.
On risk, Roger Khoury caps position risk tightly (never more than a small percent per trade), compounds through many small, controlled bets, and exits early when conditions deteriorate, treating a rising vulnerability as a prompt to reduce or flatten. The result is market-beating potential without oversized drawdowns or heroics—letting the market come to you, then managing size and expectations with discipline. He applies the same framework across timeframes—zooming out or in depending on whether you’re day trading, swinging, or investing—so the process stays consistent while the execution adapts.
