Description
The 10 O’clock Bulls Strategy is DataView’s "keep it simple" approach to trading the OR. It is the best way to start trading the OR.

This Strategy is a great place to start because it will not overwhelm you with trading ideas. This scan has two criteria. First, the stock must be trading higher than the prior day’s close. Second, the stock must have had greater-than-average volume during the 30-minute OR. The Strategy sorts the results based on relative volume for the whole day (the Scan Period is “Big Vol. Since Open”). The result is a list of the stocks that are up in price for the day, have traded big volume on the open, and have continued to trade unusually large volume for the day.

How to find the best candidates
The simplest implementation of this Strategy as a trading approach is to follow these steps:

1. Run this scan at 10:00 AM (or shortly thereafter) and save the resulting list of stocks. You can save the list by printing it, or you can set the “Refresh” Basic Filter Criteria to “never” and then pop out the scan. When you set the Refresh filter to “never” HotScans will not automatically refresh the scan. Setting a scan to “never” refresh and clicking the PopOut option will put the Strategy’s list of stocks in its own window, which you can refer to for the remainder of the day.

2. Review this list of 25 stocks. Focus on the stocks with big volume in the OR. It is best to look at stocks with relative volume over 200%. Review the charts of these stocks, and identify the ones that have a bullish big picture as described in the checklist below (the excerpt from the e-book "Trading The 10 O'clock Bulls"). At a minimum look for a strong daily trend and trading above yesterday’s high. This review should narrow the list to fewer than 10 stocks. This reduced list is a great list of candidates to trade from the long side when they trade above the OR!

3. Enter the reduced list of fewer than 10 stocks into the program you use to track stocks and monitor them for a breakout above the OR high. You simply wait for the stocks to break out and then trade them accordingly. Do not trade them until they break out. Use the tactics described in the detailed description of the Basic Bullish OR Breakout. A more in depth discussion of trading tactics based on the opening range can be found in Chapter 5 of the free e-book offered by Dataview "Trading The 10 O'clock Bulls". You will find that this list will yield great trading opportunities almost every day.

Helpful hint:
Use the OR Pattern to focus on the strongest stocks first. The default setting for the Opening Range period is 30 minutes. This is so you can easily see which stocks are trading above their OR high after 10:00 AM. Stocks above their OR high will have a bullish OR pattern icon with a yellow arrow highlighted in green shown here: or . But you don't have to wait until 10:00 AM to start reviewing the scan results! Start shortly after 9:30 AM. Look at the daily charts of the stocks showing up in the scan. During this period you can change the Opening Range period to 5 minutes until 9:50 AM, and then change the OR period to 20 minutes until 10:00 AM. If you do this then you can focus on the strongest stocks by making sure you look at the bullish OR patterns first.

Once you feel comfortable with the OR trading approach, you can let this scan refresh all day to find additional candidates as the day progresses. This Strategy will not overwhelm you with new ideas all day because the Scan Period is set to “Since Open”. This means that the stocks in this table are the volume leaders for the whole day. A stock must trade unusually large volume to qualify for this list, so the turnover in the list is much slower than you will find with many of the other HotScans Strategies. This is why it is a good Strategy for first time HotScans users.

Before you scan, know what you are looking for - have a check list Now that you’ve reached the point of letting HotScans find the candidates don’t disregard everything that was discussed in Chapters 3,4,5 and 6! Remember HotScans will give you focused ideas, which you must then analyze them based on the characteristics you want to see in a good OR setup. It is a good practice to create a checklist of all the criteria you are looking for in a trade setup. This checklist should include all criteria, not just the criteria that HotScans is filtering. When you run the HotScans Strategy you can quickly review the stocks based on your checklist. Below is a sample checklist for a “fresh breakout” based on the concepts discussed in this book. If the answer to a checklist question is “yes” then it should be viewed as a positive condition for buying the breakout. As a trader you want to find trades that meet as many of your criteria as possible. With a little practice you will be able to answer all these questions in a matter of seconds as you review a stock’s chart. Trade Setup for a Fresh Breakout: OR characteristics (see Chapter 4 for details) Is there well-defined resistance near the OR high? Is there a bullish chart pattern near the OR high? Was there unusually high volume in the OR period? The big picture (use daily chart) Is the OR high greater than or equal to yesterday’s high? Note: If the stock is above the prior day’s high it is bullish because the prior day’s high would otherwise be resistance. When the stock is above the prior day’s high, that high becomes potential support. When the OR high is in the same area as the prior day’s high that level is more significant, and the breakout is often more substantial. Is the OR high above all major resistance levels? Note: This follows the same reasoning as explained above with respect to the prior day’s high. If the stock is above or lines up with a major resistance level the breakout is more compelling. Beware of an OR breakout right below a major resistance level on the daily chart. Is the daily trend up? Note: Here is an easy way to measure the strength of the trend using simple moving averages. In a strongly-trending stock the 10-day moving average is above the 20-day, which is above the 50-day moving average, and they are all positively sloped. Did the stock gap higher? Note: Gaps are bullish when they follow though (breakout of the OR). If the gap is above the prior day’s high it is even more bullish. The OR Breakout (see Chapter 5 for details) Is there big volume at the breakout point? Is there a logical stop based on an intraday swing? After the breakout does the stock exhibit bullish price action? Note: Unless you are waiting for this confirmation, this assessment is made once you are in the trade. You may want to replace some of these questions with your own criteria. If you are buying a retracement or a second breakout above the OR you will have additional criteria for the retracement and the second breakout.