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Strategy Playbooks
Breakout · Beginner

Opening Range Breakout

Let the first fifteen minutes define the battlefield.

Backtest this playbook
Origin: Toby Crabel, Day Trading with Short Term Price Patterns and Opening Range Breakout (1990)
Session
Range 09:30–09:45 ET · entries until 12:00 ET
Timeframes
1m–5m
Markets
NQ / MNQ, ES / MES, High-volume stocks
Reward
2R
Illustration
100.0102.0104.0106.009:0009:3010:0010:30Range high 101.8Range low · stop 100.2Target 2R 105.0Opening rangeBuy-stop fills 101.8
The 09:30–09:45 range spans 100.2–101.8. At 09:50 price breaks out and the buy-stop fills at 101.8. The stop sits at the range low (100.2); the 2R objective at 105.0 is reached at 10:30.

Why it works

The open concentrates overnight orders and the day’s first institutional flows. The first fifteen minutes set a range that the morning often resolves decisively. Trading the break with a stop at the other side defines risk precisely.

The rules

01Setup

  • Mark the high and low of 09:30–09:45 ET.

02Entry

  • Buy-stop one tick above the range high; sell-stop one tick below the range low.
  • Alternative: enter on a 5-minute close beyond the range to filter fake-outs.
  • One trade per day, and no new entries after 12:00 ET.

03Stop

  • The opposite side of the range, or its midpoint for a tighter stop.

04Target

  • 2R. Flat by 15:55 ET.

05Management

  • Skip days when the range is more than 1.5× its 20-day average — the stop becomes too wide.

06Invalidation

  • A close back inside the range after entry often means a failed breakout. Let the stop handle it.

Common mistakes

  • Chasing the break after the stop order was missed
  • Trading the other side after the first trade stops out
  • Ignoring range width — wide ranges destroy reward-to-risk

Educational material, not financial advice. The illustration is a sketch of the rules, not a historical trade. Results in the backtester are hypothetical and do not guarantee future performance.