40 Minutes to Done — My 2-Line, 1-Candle Open Setup

Hey guys, it's Stephen. If you're tired of complicated strategies or feeling overwhelmed at the open, this video is for you. Over the past 12 trading days, this power bar setup has appeared nine times and it's worked profitably eight out of those nine times. And here's the best part of the setup. You can literally show up at 9:20 a.m. draw two simple lines. watch for one candle and be done before 10:00 a.m. with no stress, no guessing, no all day commitment. This is actually a great trade for the summer if you're on vacation and can't sit in front of the screen all day. I don't see how you can't have this trade in your arsenal. This trade starts with two things. The pre-market high and the pre-market low. These are the extreme price points in the pre-market before the 9:30 Eastern open. And once you've marked those, you have your decision points in place for the morning. These levels act like magnets at the open. Price loves to test them, move around those levels, and often reverse right at them. A lot of traders ignore these levels or treat them like breakout points, but this setup looks for the opposite, a move away from these levels. So once the market opens, I'm watching for one thing, a power bar. That's a large bodied candle that importantly originates at the pre-market high or the pre-market low and pushes away from that level with strength. It needs to close near its high if it's a green candle and it needs to close very near its low if it's a large red candle. This candle should clearly stand out. We're not looking for maybe candles. We're looking for power bar candles. If price tags the pre-market low or gets really close to the pre-market low, then we're looking for a large green candle and that's going to be a long setup. If price tags the pre-market high and we get a large red candle, then we're looking for a short setup. My entry is above the power bar on a long setup and below the power bar on a short setup. Let me walk you through an example literally from today. When you show up at 9:20, all you need to do is mark the pre-market high and the pre-market low. Then after the open, I'm looking for that power bar. And this is a two-minute chart. I'm looking for that power bar that originates at or near one of these levels. The market opened basically right in the middle of this range. It moved higher. So, I know I'm not going to get a power bar originating from the pre-market low. So, I'm concentrating on the pre-market high again, which is right here at 57720, let's call it, right? You don't have to be to the penny and ultra precise in this. We're keeping it simple. Right now, I'm looking for that power bar to originate somewhere in this area and move lower. Here's that power bar right here. We have a large power bar which closes right around 575 and a half. This becomes the entry. As that power bar closes, this becomes the stop. just beyond that power bar. And often I'm looking for a move to that back to or back near that pre-market low. That's an ideal trade. I don't have to get that kind of move to be profitable, but that's the ideal setup. Short at 575 and a half. We go back, get really close to that pre-market low. at 572 and a half and the trade is done and it happens to be 10:00 a.m. Okay, so first example, mark your levels at 9:20, enter the trade at 9:45 and done by 10. And here's the part that makes this setup so powerful. It's not a one-off. Over the past 12 trading days, it's shown up nine times, and eight of those were winners. I'm going to show you each of them right now. Our first trading day of the 12th was July 28th, pre-market high, pre-market low, power bar, move higher, stop at the low, and we get a nice trade higher. This time it doesn't go all the way to the pre-market high, but it goes to this pre-market high, which was set right around nine. So that is a resistance level. Winner number one. The next day, pre-market high, pre-market low, power bar, in this case, it's two bars combined that form the power bar. entry at this level, take profit or put in a stop at this level to take profit and the market sells off big time. July 30th, pre-market high, pre-market low, power bar, a little pullback, but the stop not hit and the market moves up to the pre-market high. Winner number three. The next day on the 31st, pre-market high, pre-market low. The power bar in this case originates at the low. And this is a breakout to the downside. With this trade, I'm looking for support and resistance that holds and the move from support and resistance, the pre-market supported resistance. So, no trade taken on this power bar. August 1st, pre-market high, pre-market low, the market sells off from the low, another breakout. No trade taken on this day. The next day, and I want to point something out on this. If I see a wild candle right at this 4:00 a.m. time frame, which is the pre-market for the New York, I ignore this wild candle. and look for support or resistance in the pre-market and where it sets up closer to 930. And that's my pre-market high, my pre-market low. I'm going to blow this up. We get the power bar move from the higher. No trade for me. The next day, pre-market high, pre-market low. We get the power bar move higher off below a move up to the pre-market high for another winner. In this case, you also got a power bar at 10 if you're still on the desk. A power bar at 10 that originated near the high. This was then a short setup which would have paid well as the market fell apart. So on this day, you actually could have gotten two winners, one each way. The next trading day is uh August 6th. Pre-market low, pre-market high. The market opens basically in the middle, moves up to the high. This could have been a power bar. If this were taken as a power bar, this trade would have failed. There's our losing trade. So that's the one losing trade again over the past 12 days again because I can totally see this as a power bar enter here stopped out here on the 7th pre-market high premarket low. We get a power bar enter. We don't get all the way to the bottom. So we don't get that perfect move, but it's still a profitable trade. If profit were taken here and in this situation, if I missed this exit and got the bounce back into the power bar, I wouldn't use the entire power bar as the stop. I would use here basically at entry for uh no win or possibly this level which is resistance from the pre-market close to 9:30 and take a small loss. But if you're quick on the trigger, this was a win as well. August 8th, pre-market high, pre-market low, power bar, these two combined. And even if you missed the entry here and entered a little bit higher, you had a nice winning trade off of that pre-market low that basically blasted through the pre-market high for a breakout. August 11th, pre-market high, pre-market low. A power bar that originates near, remember, it doesn't have to be at the pre-market low, just near the pre-market low. Doesn't have to be at the pre-market high, just near the pre-market high. You get a power bar, which is basically a combination of these three candles that start forming at 9:34. enter here after this third candle of this power bar formation and a nice move higher to pre-market highs. And finally, the one that I showed you guys already, that was today on the 12th. Pre-market high, pre-market low. This power bar forms in the middle, right? again, not at the low, not at the high. This power bar originates from the high. Short here goes almost back to the pre-market low. So, eight out of nine times you get a clear move away from either the pre-market high or the pre-market low. A couple of days you have no setup, so no trade. But of the last 12 trading days, eight out of nine winners. And that's the kind of consistency you can build a trading plan around. So from start to finish, this entire process can be done in around 40 minutes. It depends a little bit on how the trade plays out. In this example, it ended at 10. Some went went less than that. Some went a little more than that. But show up at 9:20. Put in your pre-market high. Put in your pre-market low. Look for a power bar that originates at the pre-market high or at the pre-market low. Take that trade. Manage it. Take the stop. If it's not working and we looked at one that didn't work and you're done around 10:00 a.m. There's no chasing random moves. There's no monitoring, you know, 15 different indicators. No watching charts all day if you don't want to. just precision with those levels and a clear plan. I have done a cheat sheet to show in a little more detail, you know, how to do this trade. Again, it's not complicated. If you want a copy of the cheat sheet for free, just comment power uh short for power bar in the comments below and I'll give you a link to that cheat sheet. Again, totally free. And I've also done another video on this exact setup which I I did just about a month ago now that video. So I'll put a a link to that uh right here on this page as I'm wrapping up this video so you can go back and I go over this exact same setup again. It just works over and over as long as you manage your stops and don't trade when there isn't a setup. So, I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please hit like and subscribe. And again, if you want that cheat sheet, just comment power in the comments and I'll get that to you in your email. Thanks for watching.