Hey traders,
Every trader obsesses over tickers, but almost nobody thinks about time.
That’s why accounts bleed.
The market at 9:30 is not the same as the market at 3:30. The pace is different. The setups are different.
The way you should trade them is different.
Yet beginners treat the open and the close like they’re interchangeable. They aren’t.
If you use the same playbook at both ends of the day, you’re gambling.
I’ll show you how to separate the two so you can stop handing money back to the market and finally trade with an actual plan.
The Open vs The Close…
Traders love to talk about “what” to trade.
- Which ticker is hot.
- Which sector is running.
- Which setup looks clean.
But far fewer pay attention to when they trade.
And that’s a mistake that costs them more than they realize.
The opening bell sets off pure chaos.
Orders that stacked up overnight flood the market.
Stocks gap, spreads widen, and momentum spikes out of nowhere.
It’s the most volatile time of day, and that can be both opportunity and danger.
If you want to trade the open, you need to come in with your plan ready. Hesitation kills.
The trades here are fast and short-lived. Take the meat of the move and move on.
Hang around too long, and you’ll watch your gains evaporate.
Fast forward to the midday stretch.
By late morning, the noise dies down. Volume thins out, and most moves lose steam.
This is the dead zone.
Beginners often force trades here out of boredom, and it almost always backfires.
The pros step away. They reset, review, and wait for the part of the day that actually matters again.
That moment comes into focus late in the afternoon.
Heading into the close, volume picks back up.
Traders position for the next session, and big players settle their books.
This is where you start to see cleaner patterns form, afternoon breakouts, VWAP confirmations, late-day squeezes.
Here, patience beats speed.
You want to let the trade prove itself. If you rush in, you’ll get trapped.
The mistake is pretending that the open and the close are the same. They’re not. One demands quick action, the other rewards discipline.
If you can’t adjust between the two, you’ll keep wondering why you make money in the morning and give it all back by the afternoon, or vice versa.
- Treat the open like a sprint.
- Treat the close like a marathon finish.
- Skip the dead zone unless you’ve got something undeniable.
That’s how you start trading time as seriously as you trade tickers.
Because in the end, when you trade matters just as much as what you trade.
Catch you in the next alert,
Jack Kellogg