Opening range breakout (ORB) explained, and how to use it

What the opening range is

Pick a session open and a length, say London and sixty minutes. Every bar from 08:00 to 09:00 London time goes into the range: its high is the highest high of those bars, its low the lowest low. While the range is still forming, every comparison is false. A level that is still moving cannot be broken. Once the last bar of the window closes, the range is fixed and price is compared against it.

There is one range per session per weekday. No range forms on a Saturday or Sunday in the session's own city. Crypto trades through the weekend, but no session opens into it, so Friday's range is the most recent one until Monday. A weekday whose range window has no bars at all, such as a market holiday, forms no range either, and the previous one stays the one in force.

Opening range settings

1. Session. Which open the range is measured from. There are four: Asia (09:00 Tokyo), London (08:00 London), New York 08:00 (the open forex traders usually mean) and New York 09:30 (the US stock market open, which the classic opening range breakout is defined on). London is the default. Each is a wall-clock time in its own city and follows that city's daylight saving: London is 08:00 in London all year, which is 07:00 UTC in summer and 08:00 UTC in winter.
2. Range length. 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes after the open. Sixty is the default.
3. Stays active for. 2, 4 or 8 hours after the open, or until the same session next opens. Eight hours is the default. Once that time passes, every comparison is false again: a close above the London range at two the next morning is not the breakout anyone means.

The same four sessions are offered on every market. On forex, metals and crypto any of them has bars to build from. US stocks and ETFs, coming soon on Elite, have bars only during regular hours, 09:30–16:00 New York, so on them the 09:30 session is the one that forms a range. The other three open while the stock market is closed.

How to use the opening range in a strategy

These are the comparisons SixOne8 offers, in the builder's own words. Each is false while the range is forming and after it stops being active.

1. Price above the range. The bar closed above the range's high. A state, true for as long as closes stay above.
2. Price inside the range. The bar closed between the range's low and high, inclusive.
3. Price below the range. The bar closed below the range's low.
4. Price crosses above the range. The previous close was at or below the high and this one is above it. A moment, true only on the bar of the crossing, so it is the usual trigger for a breakout.
5. Price crosses below the range. The mirror, through the low.

Opening Range(London, 60 min) on 15m  ·  price crosses above the range

Read it as a sentence: on the 15-minute chart, price has just closed above the high of London's first hour, within eight hours of the London open. That is what the scanner evaluates at each 15-minute close.

The timeframe has to fit the range

The range is built from the condition's own candles, so it has to be a whole number of them and start on one. A 15-minute range cannot be made from 30-minute candles. A New York 09:30 range cannot be made from 1-hour candles either, because the hour bars start at 09:00 and 10:00 and straddle the open. The builder refuses those combinations when you save and names the longest timeframe that fits: 1h or shorter for a sixty-minute London range, 30m or shorter for anything from 09:30. The rest of the strategy can stay on its own timeframe. Only this condition has to fit.

A breakout on its own fires on most weekdays. Strategies usually pair it with something that says whether that day's breakout counts. Examples are a trend condition on a higher timeframe, or relative volume on markets that carry volume.