The headline number
A five-minute range is small by construction, so price leaving it is close to a certainty. Across 3,338 sessions on NQ and ES from 2020 to mid-2026, not a single day closed without trading beyond the 09:30–09:35 range on at least one side.
of 1,670 sessions · either side: 100%
of 1,668 sessions · either side: 100%
Because a break of some side is guaranteed, the useful metric is the both-sides rate: how often the market pokes through the opening range one way and then reverses through the other. It happens on roughly seven of ten sessions, more often on ES, which tells you how frequently a first opening-range break gets faded.
The full breakdown
| Outcome (to 16:00 ET close) | NQ | ES |
|---|---|---|
| Breaks either side | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Breaks the OR high | 85.5% | 87.9% |
| Breaks the OR low | 83.3% | 85.2% |
| Breaks both sides | 68.8% | 73.1% |
| Stays inside (neither) | 0.0% | 0.0% |
The 68.8% / 73.1% both-sides rate is the false-breakout rate in disguise. Seven or so days in ten, the first push out of the opening range is followed by a push out of the other side, so a naive "buy the break of the OR high" is stopped and reversed most of the time. The opening-range edge is in the second break, the one that holds, not the first poke.
Opening Range
Draws the 09:30–09:35 opening range and its midpoint the moment the five minutes close, so both rails, and the level a breakout has to hold, are marked before the first push.
See the Opening Range indicator →Which side breaks first?
Neither, reliably. The first break of the opening range is a coin flip on both instruments, there is no directional bias in which rail gives way first.
| First break | NQ | ES |
|---|---|---|
| OR high breaks first | 49.6% | 49.8% |
| OR low breaks first | 50.2% | 49.9% |
| Simultaneous | 0.2% | 0.4% |
The takeaway: do not guess the first-break direction, there is no edge in it. The edge is in confirmation, waiting to see which break holds and which fails back into the range.
What it means for your trading
- ·A break is guaranteed; direction is not. Every session breaks one side, so the break itself carries no information, only which break holds does.
- ·Both sides break ~70% of the time. The first poke out of the range is faded more often than not; wait for the reclaim or the second, holding break.
- ·ES whips more. Its 73.1% both-sides rate versus NQ's 68.8% means more opening-range head-fakes on the S&P.
- ·First-break direction is noise. Near 50/50 on both, do not build a bias on which rail goes first.
For the setups that turn these frequencies into entries, read the Opening Range Breakout strategy. The 60-minute cousin of this range is covered in the Initial Balance break study.
Methodology
- Instruments
- NQ (E-mini Nasdaq-100) and ES (E-mini S&P 500), from continuous MNQ/MES micro-contract prices, the identical price series.
- Sample
- NQ n = 1,670 · ES n = 1,668 RTH sessions
- Period
- 2 Jan 2020 – 30 Jun 2026 (~6.5 years)
- Opening range
- 09:30–09:35 ET, the first 5 minutes of the regular session
- Break definition
- Any trade beyond the OR high or low by ≥ 1 tick (0.25 pt), measured to the 16:00 ET close
- Data
- 1-minute bars, US/Eastern; Steady Turtle proprietary session database
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