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Video: Once You Master This Strategy, Trading Becomes Incredibly Simple

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Oct 19, 2026 · based on the channel Scarface Trades

Trading becomes simple when you stop stacking indicators and start trading one repeatable sequence: mark the levels that matter at the 9:30 AM New York open, wait for price to break one of them, and enter on the retest with a stop on the other side. That is the core of the three-step opening strategy broken down by the Scarface Trades channel, and the free Simple Trader Playbook course walks through the same framework step by step. The edge is not in the setup itself but in repeating it the same way every session.

Why most traders make trading harder than it is

Most traders lose not because they lack information but because they act on too much of it at once. A typical screen holds two or three indicators, several trend lines, a chat room and a news feed, and every one of them can point in a different direction on the same candle. When two oscillators say sell while price is breaking a key level to the upside, the trader freezes, misses the move, or takes the wrong side and then blames the strategy.

The alternative is to reduce the decision to a single question: is price above or below a level that the whole market is watching? Everything else — RSI, MACD, moving-average crosses — is a derivative of price and adds lag, not information. A simple trend line drawn on a higher timeframe will often beat a screen full of indicators precisely because it forces one decision instead of five.

Step 1: setting up the trade before the bell

Preparation is the part of the strategy that happens before a single order is placed. The work is done in the minutes before 9:30 AM New York time, when the premarket session has already printed its extremes and the previous day's range is known.

1. Mark the premarket high and premarket low. These are the first levels price will test after the open.
2. Mark the previous day's high and previous day's low (PDH and PDL). These are the reference points most intraday traders and algorithms use.
3. Mark the opening range — the high and low of the first few minutes after 9:30 AM — once it forms.
4. Note whether price is trading in the upper, middle or lower third of the previous day's range. A break from the top or bottom of the range is a cleaner setup than a break from the middle.

If price is sitting in the middle of PDH and PDL with no nearby level, there is no trade — that is a valid outcome of the preparation, not a missed opportunity. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, plus liquid large caps such as TSLA, AMD, AMZN and AAPL, are the usual instruments for this kind of opening-range work because they produce clean levels and tight spreads.

Step 2: the profitable strategy is one break of one level

The signal is a decisive break of a marked level, confirmed by a close beyond it rather than a wick. A break of the premarket high after 9:30 AM tells you that buyers absorbed the supply that capped price overnight; a break of PDH tells you the market is accepting prices above yesterday's range. The same logic works in reverse for shorts.

The filter that keeps this honest is location. A break that happens immediately after the open, with expanding volume, is worth watching; a break at 11:30 AM in a quiet, choppy tape is not. This is also where most backtests mislead people: setups look obvious in hindsight, and the only way to know whether a break has follow-through is to log dozens of them and measure how often price extends versus how often it snaps back.

Step 3: the entry model and where the stop goes

The entry comes on the retest, not on the breakout candle. After price closes above a level, wait for it to come back and touch that level from above; if the level holds, enter long on the confirmation candle. The stop sits just below the level — if price closes back under it, the break failed and the idea is invalid. The target is the next marked level, usually the prior day's high or the next round number, and a minimum reward-to-risk of about 2:1 keeps a modest win rate profitable.

Two practical rules make the model usable. First, one trade per level: if the first attempt fails, do not re-enter the same level on the same session. Second, a fixed risk per trade — a common approach is 0.5% to 1% of account equity — so that a losing streak never forces a size change mid-session. Where exactly to enter is the question beginners ask most: the answer is on the candle that closes back in the direction of the break after touching the level, not in the middle of the breakout candle itself.

Common questions and doubts about this approach

The one-minute chart feels too fast. The entry model can be executed on the one-minute chart, but the levels and the direction come from higher timeframes. Traders who dislike the noise can use a five-minute chart for confirmation and accept fewer, slower signals.

Position size looks too small to matter. With a stop a few ticks behind a level, the distance is small, so the position can be large relative to the risk. The size is set by the stop distance and the fixed risk budget, not by the number of shares or contracts.

Does it work on forex? The mechanics — mark the session high and low, wait for the break, enter on the retest — transfer to EUR/USD and other pairs, but the reference levels change: the London open and the Asian session range replace the 9:30 AM opening range, and spreads and session hours differ.

Time zone and broker details. All times refer to New York time, so traders elsewhere need to convert; the broker matters less than execution speed and commissions on the instruments being traded.

The hindsight problem. A setup that looks clean on a chart after the fact may have been ambiguous in real time. The only fix is forward testing on a demo account and a written log of every break, retest and outcome before risking real capital.

Useful links

• Free Simple Trader Playbook course — the waitlist for the channel's free beginner course.
• The Accelerator — private Discord community and live trading sessions.
• Scarface Unscripted — second channel with live trade breakdowns.
• Instagram and X — short-form updates from the channel.

Bottom line

The 9:30 AM opening strategy is simple because it removes choices: mark the levels, wait for one clean break, enter on the retest, and risk a fixed amount with the stop behind the level. Its difficulty is not intellectual but behavioural — most traders skip the backtesting, chase the breakout instead of waiting, and abandon the process after two losses. Treat it as a checklist to be repeated and measured, not a secret setup, and start with the free Simple Trader Playbook course before committing capital. The framework above is the one presented by the Scarface Trades channel; it is educational material, not financial advice, and trading carries a real risk of loss.

Source: Once You Master This Strategy, Trading Becomes Incredibly Simple · Markdown version