Module 2E

The opening type read: OA, ORR, OD, OTD

The four opening types from Market Profile, how to classify one by 10:00 ET, and why the wrong playbook on the right analysis is what actually kills setups. Module 2E of the FFT curriculum.

The four opening types What the market shows you

Builds on: 2D. You know the states and the locations. This reads which of them the day is likely to give you.
Leads into: 2F, which is where the read gets confirmed or denied inside a defined window.

The four opening types are from Market Profile, developed by J. Peter Steidlmayer and set out by Dalton. The Power-of-3 and Judas swing labels are ICT-ecosystem vocabulary, used here as naming.

Terms in this module

Open-Auction: Price opens inside prior value and stays balanced. A rotational day.
Open-Rejection-Reverse: Price drives one way at the open, then sharply reverses and breaks out the other side.
Open-Drive: Price opens and immediately drives one direction with conviction, no pullback.
Open-Test-Drive: Price briefly tests the opposite side, then resumes the intended drive.
Opening range: The high-to-low band of roughly the first thirty minutes. Its shape hints at the day type.

Why this module exists

The opening type is one of the most overlooked variables in retail trading education. Most beginners watch the open as if it is the start of a random process. It is not.

The first thirty minutes of the New York session contains structural information about what kind of day is about to unfold, and the trader who reads it has filtered out the wrong setups before the window they actually trade in has even arrived.

This is not a memorisation exercise. It is a live read. By 10:00 ET you should have a working hypothesis about which opening type is in play, and that hypothesis should sharpen what you hunt for the rest of the morning.

On the names. These four types come from Market Profile and the vocabulary is Steidlmayer's and Dalton's rather than this curriculum's. Where you see them written elsewhere with slightly different names, the source names are the ones used here.

The four opening types

Open-Auction

The signature. Price opens inside prior session value and stays inside it through the first thirty minutes. The opening range is balanced, neither side commits to a drive, and volume is spread across the range rather than concentrated at the extremes.

What it tells you. The market is in acceptance of prior value. No new information is driving directional commitment, so today is more likely rotational, trading within or just around prior value.

Open-Auction: balanced, inside value, no commitment.

Open-Rejection-Reverse

The signature. Price opens at one extreme of the opening range, drives in one direction, then sharply reverses and breaks out of the opening range the other way. The reversal is often violent and finishes outside the original range.

What it tells you. The first drive was a probe, taking out stops and trapping participants on the wrong side. The reversal is the real direction. This is the same sweep-then-deliver dynamic 2D described, playing out at the session level rather than at a single level.

Open-Rejection-Reverse: the first move was the trap.

Open-Drive

The signature. Price opens and immediately drives in one direction with conviction. No meaningful pullback in the first fifteen to thirty minutes. Cumulative delta supports the drive and volume is concentrated in the drive direction.

What it tells you. Commitment happened at the open. There is no manipulation phase to wait for, and the day's real move has already started.

Open-Drive: committed from the bell.

Open-Test-Drive

The signature. Price opens, briefly tests the opposite side with a small probe against the intended direction, then resumes the drive. The test is fast and shallow.

What it tells you. The same as an Open-Drive, with one liquidity sweep at the open first. One more layer of fuel gathered from trapped participants before committing.

Open-Test-Drive: a sweep, then the same story as a drive.

Reading it live: three questions

You are not pattern matching against a static picture. You are watching the first thirty minutes and asking three things.

Where did price open relative to prior value?

Inside value, an auction is more likely
At the edge of value, a rejection-reverse or a test-drive is more likely
Significantly outside value on a gap, a drive or a rejection-reverse, depending on whether the gap holds or fills

What shape is the opening range?

Elongated, expanding vertically. A drive is in progress
Compressed, tight and overlapping. Indecision, so an auction
One-sided extension with rejection back through the open. The classic rejection-reverse signature

Is expansion probable, or is the market balanced?

Strong cumulative delta one way plus an expanding range means expansion is probable
Delta near zero with small swings and a tight range means balance
Delta flipping sharply in the first fifteen to twenty minutes means the first move was a trap, which points at a rejection-reverse

By 10:00 ET you should hold a hypothesis. What follows is the confirm-or-deny event for it, not the place you form it.

Which playbook the day allows

This is the whole practical point of the module.

Open-Auction. Standby, or fade at value edges. Rotational, no directional commitment. Most days of this type will not produce a qualifying trade
Open-Rejection-Reverse. The reversal playbook. The morning structure already contains the sweep-and-reversal dynamic, so the setup often arrives cleanly
Open-Drive. The continuation playbook. Direction is established, so what you are hunting is a pullback, not a turn
Open-Test-Drive. The continuation playbook again, usually cleaner. The morning test already cleared liquidity, so the path is more open

The wrong combination kills more setups than the wrong analysis. Fading an Open-Drive with a reversal model is fighting the day type with a perfectly good setup. Chasing continuation on an Open-Auction is hunting movement where the structure says there is none. Two of the four types say continue. Two say stand down. The opening read decides which playbook you are even allowed to bring.

Why this belongs in the written plan

The opening type read is what determines which playbook you carry into the window, and it belongs in the pre-trade write-up rather than in your head.

Two things get recorded. The classification, and specifically what in the first thirty minutes told you: range shape, cumulative delta, price relative to value. And the playbook it puts in play, reversal, continuation or standby, with the justification.

Without that written down before the window, playbook selection stays implicit. And an implicit choice is one Self 1 gets to make, which means picking the playbook that matches what you want the day to be rather than what the first thirty minutes actually showed you. That is 1C's problem arriving at 10:00 in the morning wearing a technical disguise.

Self-check

Grade yourself honestly

01What is the difference between an Open-Drive and an Open-Test-Drive, and does it change what you do?
A correct answer says the test-drive has **one shallow probe against the intended direction first**, and that it **does not change the playbook**. Both are continuation days. The test cleared liquidity, which usually makes the path cleaner rather than the read different. If you thought the probe made it a reversal, you have read the sweep in isolation from the drive that followed it.
02Price opens inside prior value and chops for thirty minutes. What is your plan?
A correct answer is **standby**, or fading value edges, and it says out loud that **most days like this produce no qualifying trade**. If your answer contained a way to find a trade anyway, note that. It is the same instinct 2A named, and it is the most expensive one in the curriculum.
03Delta flips hard against the opening drive after twelve minutes. What does that suggest?
A correct answer names the **rejection-reverse** and says the first drive was the trap, so the real direction is the other way. The follow-up worth knowing: this is the one opening type where the reversal playbook is favoured, which is why the classification has to happen before you go looking for setups.
04Why does the opening type get written down rather than held in your head?
A correct answer says an unwritten choice is one you can revise later without noticing, and names **who does the revising**. Self 1, picking the playbook that matches what it wants. If your answer was about good record keeping, you have the habit without the reason.

Where this breaks

If question 2 was the uncomfortable one

Good. It is meant to be. The Open-Auction day is the one that tests whether you have actually accepted what 2A said about how much of the time markets are in balance. Reading it correctly and then trading anyway is not a knowledge failure, and no amount of rereading fixes it. It shows up in your own record later as the days you traded badly for no reason you could name.

One rep before you continue

Classify five opens

In replay, pull the first thirty minutes of five separate days. Not twenty. Five.

For each one, write three things. The classification. The single signal in those thirty minutes that most drove your call, range shape, delta or position relative to value. And which playbook it puts in play.

Then play each day forward and check. Where the read held, note which signal was most predictive. Where it did not, note what you missed.

Five days, fifteen lines. You are training the 10:00 hypothesis until it is fast, and five honest reps beats twenty rushed ones by a wide margin.

What the next module does with this

2E gave you a hypothesis by 10:00 and told you which playbook the day allows. 2F gives you the window where that hypothesis gets confirmed or denied, and the reason the window exists at all in terms of who is active in it.

The order matters. A window without a day-type read is just a time of day, and trading a time of day is how you end up fading a drive because the clock said you could.

Where to next

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