Trading with a simple 9

Video: Once You Master This Strategy, Trading Becomes Incredibly Simple

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Oct 19, 2026 · based on the channel Scarface Trades

Trading becomes simpler when you stop stacking indicators and instead trade one repeatable plan built around the 9:30 AM New York open: mark the prior day high, prior day low and the premarket range, wait for price to break and retest one of those levels, and enter on a single confirmation candle. That is the core of the three-step method Scarface Trades walks through in the video, and the free Simple Trader Playbook course covers the same framework in more detail.

Why most traders make trading harder than it needs to be

Most traders fail not because they lack indicators but because they never commit to one repeatable setup. The video opens on exactly this problem: a chart covered in moving averages, oscillators and trend lines produces conflicting signals, and the trader ends up either frozen or taking a position that contradicts their own plan. One viewer made the point neatly — when two indicators said sell and a single trend line said the opposite, the simple read produced the better outcome. That is not an argument against analysis; it is an argument against analysis that never resolves into a decision.

The second half of the problem is hindsight bias. A clean breakout-retest looks obvious on a finished chart and much less obvious in real time, when the candle is still forming and the level has not yet been confirmed. The method below is deliberately mechanical so that the decision does not depend on how confident you feel in the moment.

The three-step framework behind the 9:30 AM setup

The framework is a routine, not a prediction: you prepare levels before the open, let the market choose which one matters, and then execute a fixed entry. Broken into its parts, it looks like this:

1. Set up the trade. Before 9:30 AM, mark the prior day high (PDH), the prior day low (PDL) and the high and low of the premarket range. These are the only lines on the chart that matter for the session.
2. Apply the strategy. Wait for price to trade through one of those levels with momentum, then wait for it to come back and retest the level from the other side. The retest is the trade; the breakout candle is not.
3. Use the entry model. Once price is back at the level, enter on a single confirmation candle in the direction of the break, with a stop on the other side of the level or the swing that created it.

The value of this structure is that it removes two of the most expensive habits in day trading: entering mid-candle on impulse, and adding indicators until the chart becomes unreadable.

Step 1 — Marking the levels that actually matter

Level preparation is the whole edge, because it decides in advance where you are willing to trade and where you are not. The prior day high and low act as the market's memory of where buyers and sellers last fought; the premarket range shows where overnight positioning sits. When the regular session opens inside that premarket range, the first meaningful move is usually a push toward one of its edges or toward PDH/PDL.

A few practical rules make the preparation cleaner:

• Draw the levels on the 5-minute or 15-minute chart before the open and keep them fixed for the session.
• Treat a level as active only after price closes beyond it, not after a single wick through it.
• If price is sitting in the middle of PDH and PDL with no nearby level, there is no setup — that is a valid reason to sit out.
• Note the time zone you are using. The 9:30 AM reference is New York time, so a trader in Europe sees the open at 15:30 CET and a trader in Asia much later in the evening.

Step 2 — Waiting for the retest instead of chasing the breakout

The strategy's core rule is that the breakout candle is information, not an entry. Price breaking a level tells you which side is in control; the retest tells you whether that control holds. Chasing the initial push means buying the top of an extended candle with a stop far away, which is how a good idea turns into a bad risk-to-reward ratio.

Waiting for the retest does three things at once. It gives you a defined invalidation point, since a failed retest means the break was false. It improves the entry price, which directly improves the R multiple on the same stop. And it filters out the choppy open, where the first move is often a liquidity grab in both directions before the real session trend appears. The trade-off is patience: some of the strongest days never retest, and you simply do not participate. Missing a runner costs nothing; taking a bad entry costs capital.

Step 3 — The entry model and where the stop goes

The entry model is intentionally narrow so that the decision takes seconds rather than minutes. After price returns to the broken level, you wait for one candle to close in your direction and enter at that close or on the following candle, with the stop placed beyond the level or beyond the swing low/high that formed the retest.

| Element | Rule |
|---|---|
| Direction | Same as the confirmed break of PDH, PDL or premarket high/low |
| Trigger | One confirmation candle closing in the trade direction at the retested level |
| Stop | Beyond the level or the retest swing, whichever is tighter and still logical |
| Target | The next reference level, or a fixed multiple of the risk |
| Skip condition | Price stuck mid-range with no level nearby |

Position sizing follows from the stop, not the other way around. If the stop is wide, the position is smaller; if the setup does not allow a sensible stop, the setup is skipped. This is also the answer to the common worry that such setups require an oversized position to be worthwhile: the size is derived from the distance to the invalidation point, and a tighter retest entry means a smaller position can carry the same risk.

Common questions traders raise about this approach

Timeframe. The levels are drawn on higher timeframes, but execution happens on the 1-minute or 5-minute chart. Traders who dislike the 1-minute noise can run the same logic on the 5-minute and accept fewer, slower signals.

Instruments. The framework is level-based, so it transfers to futures, large-cap stocks and liquid forex pairs such as EUR/USD. What does not transfer is illiquid names where spreads and slippage destroy the edge.

Backtesting. The honest answer to anyone skeptical about the win rate is that the setup must be tested on your own instrument and session before it is trusted with real money. A strategy that looks easy in hindsight is only useful once you have counted its losers.

Focus. Trading one or two instruments — a single stock plus one index future, for example — makes level marking faster and pattern recognition sharper than rotating through a long watchlist every morning.

Useful links

• Free Simple Trader Playbook course
• The Accelerator — private Discord community and live trading
• Scarface Trades on Instagram
• Scarface Trades on X

Final thoughts

Trading gets simpler when the number of decisions per session drops to a handful: which levels matter, whether price broke one, whether it retested, and where the stop belongs. The 9:30 AM opening-range method from Scarface Trades is valuable less as a secret pattern than as a discipline that forces you to wait for confirmation and to skip the middle of the range. Test it on your own charts, count the results honestly, and keep the position size tied to the stop rather than to conviction. If you want the full written framework, start with the free Simple Trader Playbook course and treat every setup as an experiment until the numbers say otherwise.

Source: Once You Master This Strategy, Trading Becomes Incredibly Simple · Markdown version