ORB 1R and 2R Targets: Planning Exits Before Entry

The exact math

The opening range is the high and low of the first 15 minutes of M1 bars after the fixed GMT session open — Sydney 22:00, Asia 00:00, London 07:00, New York 13:30. The box is set by the clock and never redrawn. A breakout confirms only when a closed M1 bar closes beyond the range (wicks do not count) and that same bar's tick volume is at least 1.5x the average of the 20 bars before it. No volume confirmation, no trade.

Everything in R flows from three numbers that exist the moment the bar closes:

• Entry = the close of the confirming M1 bar.
• Stop = the opposite side of the opening range. OR low for longs, OR high for shorts.
• 1R = |entry − stop|.

Note what this means in practice: R is never smaller than the range itself. Because entry is a close beyond the box, 1R = full range size + the overshoot of the confirming bar. A bar that closes 5 points past the high of a 40-point range gives you a 45-point R, not 40. The breakout alert in the Premium channel prints all of it — Entry, Stop with 1R in points, Target 1, Target 2, and the actual volume ratio (e.g. 2.3x average). Your job is not to compute the levels. It is to decide whether the trade is worth taking at those levels.

Worked examples per instrument

Check the short column carefully — the signs flip. Entry 20087 is below the OR low of 20095. 1R is measured up to the OR high: 20140 − 20087 = 53 points. Targets subtract: 20087 − 53 = 20034, 20087 − 106 = 19981. Same arithmetic, mirrored.

Each side of the range fires at most once per session. If the US100 short above stops out at 20140, that is only a touch of the OR high — touches trigger nothing. But if a later M1 bar then closes above 20140 with volume at 1.5x or better, the long side fires on that close, and after both sides have fired once the session is done in both directions.

Partials at 1R

1R is where trade management happens, and there are exactly two clean schemes. Pick one before entry, write it in the journal as planned R, and grade yourself against it as realized R.

• All out at 1R. Winners pay exactly +1R, losers cost exactly −1R. Simple bookkeeping, but the expectancy math below shows it demands the highest win rate.
• Half at 1R, half at 2R, stop to entry after the partial. Full loser: −1R. Partial then stopped at entry: +0.5R. Full winner: +1.5R blended. You trade some expectancy for a fatter distribution of small green outcomes.

What is not a scheme: watching price at 1R and deciding in the moment. Moving a target mid-trade converts a plan into a hope, and it destroys your journal — you can no longer separate a bad plan from bad execution.

When 2R is realistic and when it is greedy

The 1R/2R targets are mechanical. Whether to hold for 2R is a context decision, made before entry from the morning report's flow map. Two checks, in order:

1. Is 2R inside the expected move? The option-implied daily range is a cap, not a suggestion — price closes inside it roughly 2 days in 3. A 2R target beyond the EM boundary is a low-probability hold. Cap targets inside the expected move.
2. Is there a wall in the way? A call wall between your 1R and 2R is where hedging flow leans against a long. Take profit at the wall, not through it. The desk rule: a wall sitting at 2R is a trade; the same wall at 0.5R is a skip — and a breakout aimed straight into a nearby gamma wall is skipped entirely. No R math, no trade.

Gamma regime sets the default. In positive gamma, dealer hedging dampens moves — expect stalls at the walls and take profits early. In negative gamma, hedging amplifies moves — 2R and runners are more realistic. Session personality matters too: New York carries the highest volume and the best follow-through; Sydney is thin, prints small ranges, and fakes out more. A 2R hold in the Sydney session is a different bet than the same hold in New York, even with identical R math.

None of this touches the trigger. The breakout confirms on the closed bar and the volume filter, full stop. Expected move, walls, and gamma only answer where the move likely stalls — targets and skips, nothing else.

Expectancy: the win rate each target requires

Expectancy per trade = (win% × avg win) − (loss% × avg loss), everything in R. Set it to zero and solve, and you get the break-even win rate for each target:

The costs column is why R size matters. Spread and slippage are a fixed number of points, so they are a bigger fraction of R on a small range than a large one. A 0.16 silver range eats costs much faster than a 53-point US100 R. Same rules, different arithmetic per instrument.

Now the comparison that settles most arguments. Take one win rate, 45%, and run it through both targets:

• All out at 1R: (0.45 × 1) − (0.55 × 1) = −0.10R per trade. Losing arithmetic at 45%.
• Hold for 2R: (0.45 × 2) − (0.55 × 1) = +0.35R per trade. Positive at the same win rate.

The catch: those are not the same win rate in the real world. Price reaches 1R more often than 2R, so switching targets moves win% and avg win at the same time. The only way to know your actual numbers is a journal — session, setup grade, planned R, realized R, one line per trade. That is why every signal, losers included, is logged openly in the results channel. Run the arithmetic on real fills, not on the version of your trading you remember.

These are identities, not performance claims. A break-even table tells you what a target demands; it says nothing about what any market will pay. No hype, no guarantees, just data — education, not financial advice.