Sometimes you want to fade the gap. Sometimes you need to run with the gap. There is no general rule. You have to put this in the overall market context. If doing correctly, opening trade offers very good profit opportunities in a very short peroid of time. I guess the same principle to trading market open could be applied to market close to some extent. However, I haven't done well trading close as open. I guess I need to study more the patterns and behaviours of market close. BTW, you don't need big stop to trade market open. I trade NQ exclusively. 2.5 point stop is good enough for me most of the time.
Eagle, You are right I'm better at trading fast and volatile markets. Part of my problem is I'm not patient enough when the market is slow and the volatility is low. I definitely need to improve my patience.
I've been doing something very similar to this since Jan 18th. Very profitable in Jan. Slightly neg in Feb. Up a little so far in March. I have built my own rules for this setup that I feel comfortable with. I encourage you to do the same. Such easy edges are out there. No doubt they are hard to find, but they do exist.
Ido 90% of my trading before 10:30am. But will trade in the afternoon if the market is trying to pay out money. In the afternoon I only trade real strong patterns.