# What makes the 9

A three-step 9:30 AM opening-range trading strategy: mark key levels, wait for the retest and take one clean entry. Plus answers to common doubts.

Source: https://uvqwsp.top/what-makes-the-9/ · based on the channel [Scarface Trades](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI7bfebbOWLqw3m4zW7XjIg) · Video: [Once You Master This Strategy, Trading Becomes Incredibly Simple](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AXhoDnnSWw) · 2026-10-19

![What makes the 9](https://uvqwsp.top/what-makes-the-9/what-makes-the-9.webp)

## Key takeaways

- The strategy is built around the 9:30 AM US market open, when the pre-market range and the previous day's high and low (PDH/PDL) act as reference levels.
- The framework has three steps: set up the trade by marking levels, wait for a confirmation signal, then use a fixed entry model instead of chasing the first candle.
- The core rule is to wait for a retest of a broken level rather than buying or selling the breakout candle itself.
- Most losses in this style come from trading in the middle of the range, where no level is nearby and the risk-to-reward is poor.
- The setup is time-frame sensitive: the same logic reads differently on a 1-minute chart than on a 5-minute chart, so backtesting before live use is essential.

Trading becomes simple when you stop hunting for signals and start trading a small, fixed set of price levels around the US market open. The approach popularised by the Scarface Trades channel is a three-step routine: mark the levels that matter before 9:30 AM, wait for price to confirm one of them, and execute a single entry model on the retest. The free Scarface Trades Playbook course, which walks through the same framework, is available at [the Simple Trader Playbook waitlist](https://events.scarfacetrades.com/the-simple-trader-playbook-waitlist).

## Why most traders make trading harder than it needs to be

The problem for the majority of traders is not a lack of strategies but an excess of them. A chart with two momentum indicators, a trend line, a moving-average ribbon and three separate time frames will almost always produce conflicting signals, and the trader ends up picking whichever one matches the bias they already had. The Scarface Trades framing puts it bluntly: indicators can disagree with each other on the same candle, while a single clean level gives one unambiguous decision — price either respects it or it does not.

A second, quieter problem is hindsight. Setups that look obvious on a finished chart are much harder to take in real time, when the candle is still forming and the outcome is unknown. That is why the framework insists on a written plan for each level before the session starts, rather than discretionary reading of the chart as it moves.

## Step 1: setting up the trade before the open

Setup means marking your levels before the first candle of the session prints. The relevant references for a 9:30 AM open are:

1. The previous day's high and previous day's low (PDH and PDL).
2. The pre-market high and pre-market low, which define the overnight range.
3. Any obvious swing high or swing low from the prior session that price reacted to more than once.

These levels matter because they are where resting orders cluster — stops above the prior high, stops below the prior low, and breakout orders just beyond them. That concentration is what produces the fast moves the strategy tries to capture. If price is sitting in the middle of the PDH–PDL range with no level nearby, the correct action is to do nothing and wait; a trade taken in open space has no reference point for a stop and therefore no reliable risk-to-reward.

## Step 2: the confirmation that turns a level into a trade idea

A level on its own is not a signal. The second step is waiting for price to actually interact with it in a way that suggests one side has been trapped. In practice this means the level is broken, then price returns to it and holds — the classic break-and-retest. The breakout candle alone is not the trigger, because a first push through a level is frequently a liquidity grab that reverses.

This is the part most traders skip, and it is a patience problem rather than a strategy problem. Waiting for the retest costs you the first few points of a move, but it removes the scenario where you buy the top of a failed breakout and get stopped out within a minute. The trade-off is deliberate: slightly worse entry price in exchange for a much clearer invalidation point.

## Step 3: the entry model and where the stop goes

The entry model is deliberately mechanical so that it can be repeated and measured. The sequence is:

1. Wait for the candle that breaks the level to close.
2. Wait for price to come back to the level.
3. Enter on the reaction at the level, on the close of the candle that confirms the retest held.
4. Place the stop on the other side of the level or of the retest swing, whichever is tighter but still outside the noise.

The exact candle you enter on matters less than consistency — pick one rule (for example, entry on the close of the confirming candle) and apply it to every trade so that your backtest and your live results describe the same strategy. Position size follows from the stop distance, which is why trading in the middle of a range is a bad idea: an undefined stop forces either an oversized position or an arbitrary one.

## How to increase the win rate without adding indicators

The way to raise the hit rate is filtering, not forecasting. Three filters do most of the work: only trade levels that were respected at least once before, only trade in the direction of the broader intraday trend, and skip setups where the distance to the next opposing level is too small to offer a reasonable reward relative to the stop. A setup with 1:1 potential at a level is not worth the same as one with 3:1.

A single trend line and a clean level will often beat a screen full of indicators simply because there is nothing to argue with. When two indicators say sell and the level says buy, the level is the thing price actually has to interact with.

## Common questions and doubts about this approach

Several recurring concerns are worth addressing directly. The first is time frame: the same logic reads very differently on a 1-minute chart than on a 5-minute chart, and traders who are uncomfortable with 1-minute noise can apply the identical break-and-retest rule on 5-minute or 15-minute candles. The second is instrument: the method is built on US equities and index futures, but the underlying mechanic — prior high, prior low, retest — exists in forex majors such as EUR/USD as well, though session times and typical ranges differ.

The third concern is position size. Because the stop sits just beyond a level, the distance is usually small, which means a normal risk percentage translates into a larger position than traders expect — that is a feature of the setup, not a flaw, but it does mean slippage and commissions matter more. The fourth is backtesting: any claim about a win rate is meaningless until you have replayed the rule over a few hundred historical setups yourself and logged the results. Finally, session timing: levels are drawn for the 9:30 AM New York open, so anyone trading from another region needs to convert that time to their own clock before marking anything.

## Useful links

- [Free Simple Trader Playbook course waitlist](https://events.scarfacetrades.com/the-simple-trader-playbook-waitlist)
- [The Accelerator — private Discord community and live trading](https://whop.com/scarface-trades)
- [Scarface Unscripted — live trade breakdowns on the second channel](https://www.youtube.com/@ScarfaceUnscripted/videos)
- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/scarfacetrades_)
- [X (Twitter)](https://twitter.com/ScarfaceTrades_)

## Bottom line

The strategy is simple in the way that useful things usually are: mark the previous day's high and low and the pre-market range, wait for a break, and enter only on the retest with a stop beyond the level. What makes it hard is not the logic but the discipline of doing nothing when price sits in the middle of the range and no level is in play. This breakdown draws on the framework presented by the Scarface Trades channel; if you want the full walkthrough, start with the [free Playbook course](https://events.scarfacetrades.com/the-simple-trader-playbook-waitlist) and backtest the entry rule before risking real capital. Trading carries a real risk of losing capital, and no past result guarantees a future one.

## Questions & answers

**Which time frame should I use for the break-and-retest setup?**

The framework is usually demonstrated on intraday charts around the 9:30 AM open, but the rule itself is time-frame agnostic. If 1-minute candles feel too noisy, apply the identical logic to 5-minute or 15-minute candles and keep the same entry and stop rules so your results stay comparable.

**Where exactly do I enter — on the breakout candle or after the retest?**

On the retest. Wait for the candle that breaks the level to close, then wait for price to return to that level and enter on the close of the candle that confirms the retest held. Entering on the breakout candle itself exposes you to failed breakouts and liquidity grabs.

**Does this work on forex pairs like EUR/USD, or only on stocks and futures?**

The mechanic — previous day's high and low, pre-market range, break and retest — exists in any liquid market, including major forex pairs. What changes is the session: EUR/USD has no single 9:30 AM open equivalent, so you would anchor levels to the London or New York session instead.

**Why does the position size feel so large with this strategy?**

Because the stop sits just beyond a level or a retest swing, the distance is often small, so a fixed risk percentage translates into a bigger position than traders are used to. That is normal for tight-stop setups, but it makes commissions, slippage and exact stop placement more important.