The Big Trade: Simple Strategies for Maximum Market Returns

Chapter 3

Wax On, Wax Off

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

—Leonardo DaVinci

What Goes Around Comes Around

In the Chapter 2 we introduced the tools you will need to begin implementing this system. In getting to this point we’ve made the argument against traditional technical analysis, brought up some of the limitations of a purely fundamental approach, and begun to challenge the definition of the opening range and how it can be applied, but there is one last thing that we need to go over, one last leap of intuition we have to make. In the end, we have to take the idea of the opening range to its logical conclusion, and in doing so transform it into the core of your activity while trading. The opening range can be thought of as an initial slice of price, not just time.

The classic definition of the opening range is that of a slice of time: the first 30 minutes of a day, the first day of the week, the first week of the month. There’s nothing wrong with that definition; I still use it from time to time as a means to generate questions to ask of the market. But I’ve found that it is more powerful to transform the opening range into a slice of price within the context of a particular period of time.

If you think about it, all definitions of the opening range based on time are completely arbitrary, but in order for your approach to trading to be maximally successful it has to be observationally neutral, meaning that you can’t choose a 15-minute opening range one day because ...