It took me 7 years to realize I was trading the o-pen completely wrong
u/OkSubject8801 ·
Reddit — r/smallstreetbets
· March 12, 2026 at 06:34
· ⬆ 78 pts
· 💬 46 comments
| View on Reddit ↗
AI Summary
Summary
The post describes a day trading strategy focused on the market's opening range (OR), specifically the first 15 minutes of the U.S. stock market session (9:30 - 9:45 AM ET).
The author's thesis is that avoiding trades in the volatile first 15 minutes and instead using the high and low of that period as key levels for subsequent trades (breakouts, retests, or range rejections) leads to more consistent profitability.
Quality assessment: This is a post about trading methodology and personal discipline, not fundamental due diligence (DD) or speculation on a specific asset. It offers a strategic framework rather than a specific investment thesis.
Score78
Comments46
Upvote %94%
▶ Full Post Text
The o pen is where a lot of traders get chopped up.
I know because it used to happen to me all the time.
Market o pens, big candles start printing, you feel like you’re missing the move, jump in late, get stopped out… repeat.
I’ve been trading about 7 years now (first few were rough, last 4 profitable) and the biggest thing that helped me was actually respecting the opening range. I know OR setups are already pretty popular, but once I forced myself to slow down and wait for structure things improved a lot.
My main rule now:
No trades until the first 15 minutes are finished.
At 9:45 the opening range is set and those levels basically become the map for the morning.
From there I’m mostly watching for two scenarios.
**Break + retest continuation:**
OR high breaks
price pulls back and holds the level → long
OR low breaks
retest fails → short
Or the opposite situation where the break fails and we just rotate.
**Range rejection:**
Price rejects the OR or premarket levels and moves back into the range.
Targets are usually just the next structural levels like premarket high/low or weekly levels.
Nothing crazy. Just trying to keep things simple and trade level to level.
I’m also a software developer (about 10 years coding), so after getting tired of drawing the same levels every morning I ended up building a couple TradingView indicators for myself.
One maps the OR + premarket + weekly levels automatically, and the other helps confirm trend so I’m not trading against momentum.
They’re not really “signal generators.” More like a framework to keep me disciplined.
Honestly the biggest edge I found wasn’t predicting the market.
It was just not taking bad trades..
btw I can't type the word ()pen ...