Quote from jwcapital:
Back in the nineties, someone suggested to me that the best trade is to fade the 9:30 AM ET open. Sell if the futures are up and buy back when/if they pullback to the previous day's close. Do the opposite if the futures open down. I never really studied this. Anyone know if this technique has a high win/lose ratio? anyone make consistent money doing this? How far away would you put your protective stop in this situation? Just curious.
Sometimes you want to fade the gap. Sometimes you need to run with the gap. There is no general rule. You have to put this in the overall market context.
If doing correctly, opening trade offers very good profit opportunities in a very short peroid of time.
I guess the same principle to trading market open could be applied to market close to some extent. However, I haven't done well trading close as open. I guess I need to study more the patterns and behaviours of market close.
BTW, you don't need big stop to trade market open. I trade NQ exclusively. 2.5 point stop is good enough for me most of the time.