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Writer's pictureFred Dionne

A Simple System Demonstrates Why Active Management Beats Passive


The Opening Range Breakout System

As previously referenced, a 5-minute ORB strategy is a strategy that allows the trader to bet on a breakout from the opening range during the first 5 minutes of the trading session. We applied the ORB strategy on the QQQ ETF1, which is the most liquid instrument available that replicates the Nasdaq Index. This strategy can take both a long and a short exposure. Our model assumed that if there was to be an ORB, it would occur in the same direction of the first 5-minute move. In other words, if during the first 5 minutes the market moved up, we took a bullish position starting from the second candle’s opening price. Conversely, if the first 5-minute candle was negative, we took a bearish position at the open of the second 5-minute candle. No positions were opened when the first 5-minute candle was a doji (open = close). The stop loss was placed at the low of the day (which was the low of the first 5-minute candle) for a long trade, and at the high of the day (which was the high of the first 5-minute candle) for a short trade, as shown conceptually in Figure 1. The distance between the entry price and the stop is

labeled as Risk($R).


We set the profit target at 10x the $R. Should the target not have been reached by the end of the day (EoD), we liquidated the position at market closure. We assumed a starting capital of $25,000, a maximum leverage of 4x, and a commission of $0.0005/share traded. The trading size was calibrated such that if a stop was hit, we lost 1% of our capital. We used a 1% risk budget per trade as the historical average daily move on QQQ is 1%.


Out of 1,795 trades, 51% were long trades while 49% were short. The annualized Sharpe Ratio was 1.12 while the annualized rate of return was 31%.





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