Quote from Floyd Roberts:
Anek,
What's significant about the ORL and ORH? Thank you.
Floyd
My two cents on this topic from studying Anek's past charts. (I saved nearly all of them and refer to them from time to time).
If you go back on your own trading system and plot horizontal lines corresponding to the 15 minute opening range of ES or any stock, you will find that quite frequently the ORL/ORH lines serve as support and resistance throughout the day.
Given today's trading, you can see ORH act as resistance at 9:38am (original range defining moment), 9:59, and 15:45 EST. the 15:45 EST resistance point at 864.25 was the last gasp upwards before the end of the day dump. 864.25
ORH also acted as support a few times during the afternoon narrow range/triangle.
ORL at 854.75 was support at 9:41, 9:46, 11:37 and 11:44. It resisted at 10:35.
I often leave the prior day's ORL and ORH as S/R lines on my charts for further reference. I change the color to a drab olive so I know it was yesterday's range. I have the current day's ORH/ORL in hot pink.
In general, I like to see ORh or ORL "flip" before taking a direction on the day. Today was a pain as we had a morning reversal as well as an afternoon triangle that reversed direction again.
I think the ORH/ORL was an evolution of Anek's style somewhere along the AHG trail. Anek's original AHG post discussed 2 HH's and 2 LL's defining the trend. After reviewing his charts from summer 2008, it seems that he lets the ORH/ORL be his first guide on direction for the day after the bell rings. With experience, it seems that the confluence of major S/R levels w/ reversal pattern formations and support/resistance level flipping help define and confirm any change in direction.
Anek is "faster" than simply looking for 2HH's or 2LL's. For instance, see the top of Friday Nov 14. First thing is, the high of the prior day broken but had not turned into support. After the subsequent retrace from 918, prices failed to make a higher high despite trying twice. The new high failure coupled with a trendline break might have given you either a 1-2-3 basic reversal signal or even an inverse dragon. You could have shorted off the trendline break before witnessing two LL's. If playing an inverse dragon, you might have been adding to your position as the lower low's formed to confirm the major reversal.
Paying attention to PA would have let you get short from about 908 as opposed to waiting for 2 LL's & LH's. Better entry, less heat, more money.
I am trying to get there too... given that I'm recently unemployed, I figured now would be a good time to learn as quickly as possible. Thankfully, the AHG thread has been around for over a year and I wish I had been a part of it in the making. Otherwise, I would probably be trading MACD crossovers.
Thanks for everyone who contributed to the success of that thread and especially to Anek himself.
Hope that helps,
Stone