Do any of you have any methods you'd care to share in regards to predicting the opening move for the day when the ES market opens at 9.30? I found a trading room a while back and one of the guys blew my mind with how he'd tend to jump into the market long or short within a few minutes of the market open each day and typically he'd ride it for a very big move. Often holding all day without taking any heat on his entry at all and taking anywhere between 10-40 points profit on the ES most days. It was very rare where he'd get it plain wrong He said it was mainly just experience and coudn't really give me a straight answer. Are there any tools that i'm missing? His hit rate was so good that i assume he's simply looking at some sort of indicator or info that i'm yet to discover? I'm 100% certain he'd have shorted the ES open today and held it for at least the gap fill some 60 or so points down
traders are not interested in predicting the market. Just focus on the chart; all the vital info is in there. But first, you must know how to read the chart. If you try to get even much more information to help you in the prediction, you will end up suffering from data analysis paralysis.
I trade the open. I watch a bond/equity portfolio (synthetic), index spreads, index VWAP, the index basis spread, and indexed vol, among other things. The open is hard to trade, in my experience. VWAP over days with like 15m bars can help a lot.
Check out the following website. It is all about Fair Value and Premium. While I don't use it anymore - it did work well for the Open of the Market. There is a Formula - explained on the website. http://www.programtradingresearch.com/index.html
Do your own research and back-test the Open. I disagree with the user who said that everything you need is on the charts. Personally, I'd feel naked if charts were all I had to look at. It's possible the trader you referenced used only charts, though. I don't know. Generally, when someone have something really good they keep it to themselves. The ones who don't usually write books or become vendors.
If he's really that good, then yes, he's using something you've yet to discover (if you're not 'that' good). There's no substitute for experience, and he probably has some tools to evaluate movement as well. But whatever it is, I guarantee you it's not watching cnbc or bloomberg.