The Opening Range is the range obtained from the highest and lowest price of a security during the first minutes of daily trading activity. For example, an opening range can be calculated for the first 5, 15 or 30 minutes. Apart from the Opening Range indicator found here in the Library section, you may also review the features of the Premium Suite Opening Range.
Indicator Description
A number of trading systems rely on the Opening Range indicator for clues on directional bias. For example, index futures traders used to mark the high and low points during the first 30 minutes. Following this time window, one would take long positions above the opening range. Opposite, short trades when prices move below the range. You may then locate “opening range breakouts” once prices breach the range high/low levels. For additional details, review our Opening Range Spotlight (with video) now.
Other than a simple breach of the range levels, one may build in additional conditions to distinguish between “real” breakout levels and reversal points. For example, Mark Fischer worked with an offset of ticks above/below the breakout level in order to confirm the breakouts. Alternatively, breakouts can be verified by observing whether the market stay above/below the range levels for a certain time. For example, a breakout is valid if prices stays above/below the range high/low for 20+ minutes.
The opening range high/low and pre-session high/low levels may subsequently work as important areas of support/resistance during the day.
RTH Session Template
The opening range indicator displays the opening range / pre-session range and the current open of the RTH session. In order to retrieve the correct opening price, we strongly recommend to use a trading hours template that adds a session break for the regular open.
In particular, one should always use such a trading hours template with tick, volume, range or renko bars. For minute bars the indicator may also be used with the trading hours template <instrument settings>, if the first price bar of the opening range aligns to the opening time.
For example, the indicator will show the correct opening prices for the E-mini S&P futures contract on 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 5 min, 10 min, 15 min and 30 min charts.
Other Library Indicators
To validate Opening Range indicator setups, the Range Analysis indicator can be used to determine a higher timeframe consolidation / contraction period, as discussed in our Indicator Spotlight on the Opening Range Breakout Strategy.
You may further increase the probability of locating profitable Opening Range indicator setups by determining whether setups are likely to run into key support / resistance levels. You may for example consider using Fibonacci lines, such as the Prior Day Fibs, standard Daily Pivots, Camarillo Pivots Daily or the Rolling Daily Pivots. You may review additional information on trading with Pivot Points, the use of rolling pivots for trend detection and a trading strategy based on Fibonacci Retracement levels in our Indicator Spotlight.
One may locate additional support resistance levels by using the Average Range for a daily, weekly or monthly lookback period. The Indicator Spotlight has reviewed the Daily Range Projections, aka the ADR indicator. For higher timeframes, you may review the Weekly Range Projections / Monthly Range Projections.
To evaluate volume with the Opening Range indicator, you may use the Better Volume indicator, Force Index or Relative Volume. Our NinjaTrader Relative Volume indicator was discussed in our Indicator Spotlight. For instruments that lack reliable volume information (FX/Crypto currencies), you may consider analyzing Relative Ranges. Our Relative Ranges indicator was also reviewed in the Indicator Spotlight.
Finally, managing open profits may be done by using the Chande Kroll Stop. Other trailing stop indicators are available from the Trailing Stops category.
The Opening Range indicator available for NinjaTrader 8 and is compatible with our LizardRenko bars.
