Trend / Momentum
Opening Range Breakout (ORB)
The first few minutes of the session set a range. The trade is betting on whether the break out of that range keeps going or snaps right back. Not every day answers the same way.
Twenty days, one grid
Pick an opening range length and generate a fresh batch of 20 simulated sessions. Each square is one day, green for a breakout that held, rust for one that failed back into the range, gray for a day that never broke out at all. Click any square to see that day's actual price path.
How it works
- The opening range is just the high and low of the first block of minutes. Five, fifteen, and thirty minutes are the three most common windows. Whatever the market does in that window becomes the box the rest of the day is measured against.
- The trade triggers the moment price closes outside that box. A close above the range high is a long signal, a close below the range low is a short signal. Nothing about the trigger itself says whether the move continues.
- A shorter opening range reacts faster, and is wrong more often. Five minutes of price action is a small sample, it breaks out sooner but produces more fakeouts. Thirty minutes waits longer to trigger but tends to be a more decisive read on the day.
- A tight range is a better signal than a wide one. A narrow opening range means the market genuinely paused before choosing a direction. A wide, choppy opening range breaking out is often just noise finding an exit, not real conviction.
Where this breaks
The fakeout that reverses hard right after the entry
Switch to the 5-minute range and generate a few batches. The rust squares show up more often than they do at 30 minutes, that's the direct cost of reacting faster. An ORB entry has no built-in confirmation, it fires the instant the range breaks, which means every single trade is taken before there's any proof the move is real. The strategy's edge, if it has one, comes entirely from the exit and the stop, not from being right on the trigger.