If you’re looking for a straightforward trade that you can take every day to consistently gain an edge you’re in the right place. This is by far the easiest and least time intensive trading strategy to implement and with a little commitment and dedication, you can master it.
Most traders overcomplicate their trading with tons of indicators, look at too many charts at once, and become paralyzed by over analysis. The key component to good trading is building a strategy that is repeatable over time.
The reason it works is by being simple and hands off. Too many parameters and constraints and everything starts to fall apart.
The Best Markets to Trade the ORB
I prefer to trade the futures markets (particularly the E-mini S&P) for simplicity sake when it comes to taxes. Futures are taxed at what’s called 60/40 tax treatment meaning 60% are taxed at long-term capital gains and 40% short-term capital gains. It also means that all of your trades are combined into one simple gain/loss form. Talk to a tax professional about what’s best for you.
For these reasons, I execute this strategy on the E-mini S&P. You could trade the NQ, YM, RTY, etc just as easily.
See video below.
The Entry
- Wait for the first 15-min bar to form.
- Using a buy and sell stop, place an order 1 tick above the high and 1 tick below the low.
- Whichever way the market breaks is the direction you trade.
Stop
- Place your stop on the opposite end of the 15-min candle. Target 20 pts
To curb your risk, once a candle closes outside of the 15-min range entirely you can move your stop to break even.
The critical piece of this strategy is to essentially set it and forget it. Which is actually hard for most people. Below is newly added video where I walk through my strategy.
Conclusion
So I encourage you to give it a try. Trade the strategy on paper for a month before going live and look at your results. If you have a small account or are just getting started, begin on the micros (/MES). You can easily move to the mini’s and add more contracts as you get more trading under your belt.
Editor Update: A video highlighting the author’s strategy along with the author’s twitter account were added on 10/28/22 at 10:48 pm central time.
Twitter: @EminiMind
The author trades E-mini S&P futures (ES) and may have a position in mentioned securities at the time of publication. Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.
