Opening Range Breakout Strategy: Rules and a Test
The opening range breakout (ORB) strategy explained: the rules, common versions, and how a 15 minute ORB did on 7 years of NQ under prop firm drawdown rules.
The opening range breakout, or ORB, is one of the oldest day trading strategies. The idea: the first minutes after the open show where buyers and sellers are fighting, and a break out of that early range often starts the move of the morning.
The basic rules
- Mark the range. Take the high and low of the first N minutes after the open, for index futures usually from 9:30 New York time: 5, 15 or 30 minutes.
- Wait for the break. Go long when price trades above the range high, short when it trades below the range low. Many versions take only the first break of the day.
- Place the stop. On the other side of the range, at its middle, or a fixed distance.
- Take profit. A fixed multiple of the risk (for example 2R), a level, or the end of the session.
Common versions
| Choice | Options | Trade off |
|---|---|---|
| Range length | 5, 15, 30, 60 minutes | Short ranges trigger more trades and more false breaks |
| Entry trigger | Touch of the level, or a candle close beyond it | A close confirms the break but enters later |
| Stop | Other side, middle of the range, fixed points | Other side is safest but can be very wide on big ranges |
| Target | Fixed R, previous day levels, end of day | Fixed R is simple to test; end of day lets winners run |
| Filters | Range size vs recent ranges, gap size, trend | Filters cut trades; check they don't just fit the past |
How a 15 minute ORB did on 7 years of NQ
We tested a plain version on NQ price history from May 2019 to February 2026: the 9:30 to 9:45 high and low, the first break after 9:45, a 20 point stop ($400 on 1 NQ), a 40 point target, $15 of costs per trade, and every trade inside a $50,000 prop firm evaluation. As a yardstick, the same evaluation was run with a coin flip trader: one trade a day at a random time, random direction, same stop, target and costs.
| Drawdown rule | Coin flip | Opening range breakout |
|---|---|---|
| Static | 31.2% | 40.7% |
| End of day trailing | 21.6% | 25.2% |
| Intraday trailing | 18.4% | 22.3% |
The breakout beat the coin, but under the intraday trailing drawdown its lead shrank to about 4 points, and year by year it was uneven: it passed 8.9% of evaluations started in 2019, 11.7% in 2021 and 17.4% in 2023 (below the coin each time), and 28.2% in 2022 and 33.5% in 2024. Full tables are on the evaluation pass rate research page.
What that means in practice: a plain ORB is not a free edge, the drawdown rule changes the result as much as the strategy does, and any version you trade needs its own test.
How to test your own ORB
- Write the exact rules, including what happens when both sides break or the range is huge. See how to backtest a trading strategy.
- Count costs and slippage. Breakout entries are where fills are worst.
- Check neighbours. If 15 minutes works but 10 and 20 don't, you probably found noise.
- Test under your account's rules, not just in dollars. A strategy that makes money over years can still fail most 30 day evaluations. Trailing drawdown explained shows why.
Practice the open on replay
The New York open is one half hour a day in a live market. On replay you can practice dozens of them in an evening. ChartTrainer replays real market days for NQ, ES and their micros candle by candle with the date hidden, with a New York open window, and its script editor and backtester can run an ORB over every session. Start from the futures simulator.
Videos
Questions
- What is the opening range breakout strategy?
- A day trading strategy that marks the high and low of the first minutes after the market opens, then enters when price breaks out of that range, long above the high or short below the low, with a stop on the other side or inside the range.
- What is the best opening range time frame?
- Common choices are the first 5, 15 or 30 minutes after the 9:30 New York open. Shorter ranges trigger more trades and more false breaks; longer ranges trigger fewer, later trades. There is no single best one; test the one you will trade.
- What is the success rate of the opening range breakout?
- It depends on the stop, the target and the market. With a stop half the size of the target, a breakout must win more than 33.3% of trades, plus costs, to make money. In our NQ test, a 15 minute ORB passed 22.3% of $50,000 evaluations with an intraday trailing drawdown, against 18.4% for a coin flip.
- Does the opening range breakout work on NQ?
- On NQ price history from 2019 to 2026, a 15 minute ORB with a 20 point stop and 40 point target beat a random entry overall, but by only about 4 points of pass rate under a trailing drawdown, and it did worse than the coin in 2019, 2021 and 2023.