Trading Strategies
Opening Range Breakout
Marking the high and low of the first minutes of the session and trading the break of that range. A classic, rule-friendly futures day trading play.
In plain English
The opening range (commonly the first 5, 15, or 30 minutes of the US equity session) frames the day's first auction. ORB traders buy the break of its high or sell the break of its low, stop on the far side, often targeting a multiple of the range.
Its mechanical entries and defined risk translate cleanly into prop rules, and it concentrates trading in the most liquid hour. Choppy opens produce back-to-back fakeouts, so many practitioners take at most two attempts per day, an approach daily loss limits enforce anyway.
- The 15 minute opening range on NQ is 17950 to 17990.
- A trader buys the 17991 break with a stop at 17969 targeting 18070, twice the range height.