The Rule Adherence Score (RAS): Grading the Decision, Not the Outcome
Every Trade Review on this site carries a Setup Grade and a full RAS breakdown. Here's exactly what those categories measure, in Cory's own written notes for each one.
Reference — Rule Adherence Score RubricA profitable trade can be poorly executed. A losing trade can be model-compliant. If the only thing being tracked is win/loss and P&L, that distinction disappears — and with it, the ability to tell whether the process is actually working.
The Rule Adherence Score (RAS) exists to separate those two things. It scores how the trade was executed, independent of whether it made money. A session can score a 9.8/10 on risk management and still end flat. A trade can score low across the board and still win. Both outcomes are informative — the second one is the more dangerous of the two, because a win rewards exactly the behavior that should be getting corrected.
How Scoring Works
Every graded session is broken into categories, each scored from 0 to 10 — usually with a decimal, not just a whole number. The current rubric uses eight:
Roughly:
- ▸0–3 — the rule tied to that category was broken, skipped, or never defined in the first place.
- ▸4–6 — there was some adherence, but it was inconsistent, late, or only partially followed.
- ▸7–10 — the category was executed the way the plan called for, start to finish.
The eight categories:
| Category | What it evaluates |
|---|---|
| Narrative Alignment | Was the higher-timeframe read (bias, macro context) correct, and did execution stay consistent with it rather than second-guessing it intraday? |
| Liquidity Map | Were the key liquidity zones — prior highs/lows, FVGs, session opens, resting sell-side/buy-side — identified accurately ahead of time? |
| HTF Structure | Was the larger structural context (premium/discount, distribution vs. reversal) correctly read and adapted to as it developed? |
| LTF Confirmation | Did the lower-timeframe trigger actually confirm before acting on it, rather than anticipating the move? |
| Risk Management | Was capital protected — stops honored, size appropriate, no forcing entries into poor conditions? |
| Execution Discipline | Was there any revenge trading, chasing, or emotional re-entry — or was the process allowed to play out on its own terms? |
| Emotional Control | Was the session handled with composure, accepting uncertainty rather than forcing a prediction? |
| Model Integrity | Were the actual model rules respected even when a technically-existing setup didn't fully meet standards? |
An older version of this rubric (visible on some earlier Trade Reviews) used a different eight-category breakdown — Narrative, Setup, Entry, Risk, Sizing, Management, Time, and Emotions. Same spirit, different split; both are graded the same way.
A category isn't scored on whether the trade worked — it's scored on whether that specific piece of the process was followed. A session can lose money after a textbook execution of every category, and it should still score high.
A Worked Example
This is a real graded session — Tuesday, May 19, 2026, a day where the read was directionally correct but the trade wasn't taken:
The actual notes written for that day, category by category:
- ▸Narrative Alignment (8.2) — the HTF read was correct overall, but intraday inconsistency between the three index futures lowered confidence.
- ▸Liquidity Map (8.7) — key zones (prior week low, overlapping FVGs, weekly open, resting sell-side liquidity) were identified accurately and ultimately delivered.
- ▸HTF Structure (8.5) — the market's vulnerable premium pricing before downside continuation was read correctly, aligned with the broader context.
- ▸LTF Confirmation (6.8) — the weakest area: lower-timeframe confirmation kept conflicting due to unstable correlation between the indices, and the resulting hesitation was judged justified rather than a mistake.
- ▸Risk Management (9.8) — no entries forced into poor conditions; capital was protected despite eventually being proven directionally correct.
- ▸Execution Discipline (9.5) — no revenge trading, no chasing, no emotional re-entry.
- ▸Emotional Control (9.4) — uncertainty was accepted rather than forced into a prediction.
- ▸Model Integrity (8.4) — the setup technically existed, but since the environment didn't fully meet standards, the framework was honored over lowering the bar.
Averaging the eight (8.2 + 8.7 + 8.5 + 6.8 + 9.8 + 9.5 + 9.4 + 8.4, divided by 8) gives 8.7/10 — 87%, landing in the B range:
| RAS % | Typical grade band |
|---|---|
| 90–100% | A range |
| 80–89% | B range |
| 70–79% | C range |
| 60–69% | D range |
| Below 60% | F |
(These are the conventional cutoffs a percentage-to-letter scale uses; the exact +/- boundary within a band is a judgment call, same as any graded rubric.)
Why Grade the Decision, Not the Result
This particular example is worth sitting with: the day ended flat, no trade taken, yet it scored an 87%. That's the entire point of the rubric — a newer trader scores a day like this poorly because "nothing happened." A more experienced read scores it well because the process — reading conflicting signals correctly, refusing to force a low-confidence entry, protecting capital — is exactly what's supposed to happen when confirmation isn't there. The two failure modes the scorecard is designed to catch are the ones P&L alone hides:
- ▸A high-RAS loss (or flat day) — the process was followed and the market simply didn't cooperate, or didn't confirm. Nothing to fix here except sample size.
- ▸A low-RAS win — the process broke down and the market bailed it out anyway. This is the one that costs money over time, because a win reinforces the behavior instead of correcting it.
Tracking RAS scores over a large enough sample turns "I feel like I've been undisciplined lately" into an actual number you can watch move — by category, so a slipping Risk Management score or a chronically weak LTF Confirmation shows up as a specific, addressable pattern instead of a vague feeling.
Every published Trade Review on this site carries its own Setup Grade and full RAS breakdown — click into any category on one to see the actual notes behind that score. Worth browsing a few to see the rubric applied to real, graded trades.