Opening Range Breakout (ORB) Playbook

The opening range breakout (ORB) is one of the oldest intraday setups for a reason: the first minutes after the U.S. cash open concentrate the day's overnight positioning into a decision. But "buy the break of the first bar" is a way to hand your account to the market's opening noise. This guide treats ORB as a filtering framework: a way to trade only the breakouts that are initiating real participation, and to skip the ones that are just liquidity being swept.

Defining the range: pick a window and hold it

The opening range is simply the high and low established over a fixed window after the 9:30 ET open. Common windows are the first 5, 15, or 30 minutes. Shorter windows (5 minutes) give earlier signals and more false breaks; longer windows (30 minutes) give fewer, cleaner signals but larger stops and later entries. What matters is that you commit to one window per instrument and stop moving it to fit the trade you wish you had taken.

Worked example on ES (E-mini S&P 500 futures): say the 9:30–9:45 range prints a high of 5412.00 and a low of 5404.50, a 7.5-point (30-tick) range. Your breakout trigger sits just beyond each edge, your invalidation sits on the opposite edge or the range midpoint (5408.25), and your first objective is a measured move of the range height projected from the break. Everything is defined before price gets there.

The measured-move target

A 7.5-point range breaking above 5412 projects a first target near 5419.50 (range height added to the breakout). It is a reference that keeps you from either bailing at the first green tick or holding a winner into a full round-trip. On SPY the same logic scales down, a $0.75 opening range gives a $0.75 first objective.

Filtering: the four questions before you take the break

The edge in ORB comes from refusing most breakouts. Before risking a full position, require alignment on all four:

Direction of context. Is the broader context pointing the same way as the break? A long ORB that breaks above resistance into open space is a different animal than the identical chart pattern fired straight into the next resistance level. See how to use the daily levels for what those labels mean.
Range shape. A tight, coiled opening range that breaks cleanly is higher quality than a wide, whippy range where price has already tagged both edges twice. Wide ranges mean the "breakout" may just be the fourth failed poke.
Location relative to structure. A breakout that clears the opening range and prior-session structure (yesterday's high, overnight high, a published level) has two reasons to run. A break into the middle of yesterday's range has none.
Follow-through on the break bar. Does the breaking bar close beyond the level and hold, or does it wick through and snap back? First-touch entries get filled but eat more failures; waiting for a hold trades a few ticks of entry price for a break you have more reason to trust. See confirmation vs. first touch.

How this maps to the Trade Plans

ORB and the Trade Plans method solve the same problem from two directions. The opening range gives you an intraday level built live off the session. The daily levels in the report give you pre-planned levels, drawn on ES, SPY, NQ and QQQ before the open, that mark resistance, support and the nearest pivot. The best ORB trades happen when those two agree: the opening range breaks up and price is reclaiming or holding above a published level. When the opening range breaks one way straight into a published level, that disagreement is itself information, and it usually means wait. The Trade Plans is built to give you that directional context before 9:30 so the open is a confirmation step.

Where ORB execution breaks

Taking every break. On a quiet, rangebound day the opening range often is the day's range. Breaks fail back inside repeatedly. If the instrument is sidelined, the answer is frequently zero ORB trades.
Oversizing into the open. The 9:30–9:45 window carries the widest spreads and fastest moves of the day. A stop that is "one range width" can be several points on a volatile open. Size off the stop distance.
No failed-break plan. A break that reclaims the range and reverses is a well-known trap ("failed breakout, look the other way"). If you have not pre-decided how you respond when your break fails, you will respond emotionally.
Chasing. Entering three bars late, after the measured move is already half-spent, inverts your risk-reward. If you missed the clean entry, the trade is gone.

Putting it into daily practice

Pick your window, mark the range, and write down both scenarios, the long-above and the short-below, with entry, invalidation, and first target for each, before the open. Overlay the day's published levels so you know where price is likely to stall. Then trade only the break that satisfies all four filter questions, at your planned size, with your failed-break response already decided. Done this way, ORB is a selective, rules-first way to participate in the one or two clean opening moves that actually pay. If you want the pre-open levels that make this filtering easier, that is exactly what the report delivers, see pricing for the free session review and the next-session levels in Pro.

Sources

Educational content only. Not investment advice.