Open Type Screen
Peter Steidlmayer's Market Profile splits the open into four types, the framework James Dalton set out in Mind Over Markets (1990): Open-Drive, Open-Test-Drive, Open-Rejection-Reverse, and Open-Auction. Paste the first bars off your open and this screen names the type before the initial balance even finishes, then tells a range trader whether today is one to fade or one to leave alone. A drive or a test-drive points at a trend day and calls for standing aside; a rejection-reverse hands a fade past the level the market gave up on; an auction is the open a range trader wants, box and all. This screen reads bar closes against the open price rather than tape rotations, and it calls a push under 1.5 times the first bars' noise a test, a bigger push that still reverses a rejection: a convention stated here since Steidlmayer's own read came off the tape, not bars.
One bar per line, oldest first, on 1 to 5-minute bars ideally. A leading time and a trailing volume column are fine and get ignored. Paste at least 4 bars; 8 to 12, the first 30 to 60 minutes, gives a reversal room to prove itself.
No read yet
Paste your bars and hit Read. Or load an example.
How this reads the open. The open price is your first bar's open unless you set one. The noise band is the average bar range, high minus low, of the first 5 bars unless you override it; every push gets measured against it. A close counts as above or below the open once it clears the open by 5% of the noise band, so a bar that closes a tick from the open doesn't flip a side on its own. Zero closes on the other side of the open: Open-Drive. One crossing, where the push after it beats the push before it and clears 2 noise bands, and the push before it stayed under 1.5 noise bands: Open-Test-Drive. The same crossing and the same size test, but the push before it topped 1.5 noise bands: Open-Rejection-Reverse instead, since that much movement before the reversal was a full auction attempt, not a probe. One crossing that hasn't cleared 2 noise bands yet, or hasn't beaten the push before it: too early to call, and the screen says so rather than guessing. Two or more crossings: Open-Auction, unless one side's push has cleared 2 noise bands and tops the other side by half again as much, in which case it's an auction leaning that way. Keyboard: Enter reads the bars, 1 to 4 load the examples, C copies the read.
| Open type | Tell | Range-trading play |
|---|---|---|
| Open-Drive | No close trades back through the open. Price extends one way from the first bar on. | Step aside, or trade the break. The range is off for the day. |
| Open-Test-Drive | A close trades through the open, small, then reverses and beats that test by 2 noise bands or more. | Same as a drive: step aside. The test bought time, not doubt. |
| Open-Rejection-Reverse | A close trades through the open after a bigger push, and the reversal beats that push. | Fade is live in the new direction only, past the level the first push failed at. |
| Open-Auction | Price closes on both sides of the open more than once, neither side clearing 2 noise bands. | Box the range so far and fade both edges. The read a range trader wants. |
Educational tool only, not financial advice. Open type comes from a small number of early bars and can flip if the next one closes the other way. Dalton's own open types come off the tape's rotations; this screen's bar-close convention is a stand-in for when tape reads aren't available, and it will disagree with a tape read now and then.
Built by Jason Parker, founder of Trading Ranges.
Built by Jason Parker, founder of Trading Ranges.