Three rules, one curve
The Open, The Close and The Map trade different parts of the day. How the three fit together, with their backtest and its limits.
Read the Open runs three rules on Nasdaq futures. Each one trades a different part of the day and holds for a different length of time, and that's the point: when one has a flat stretch, the others usually don't.
- The Open trades the morning's move once it breaks out of its normal range, and is flat by the close.
- The Close buys a sharp dip inside an uptrend near the close and gets out on the bounce, usually within a few days.
- The Map reads market structure across timeframes and takes clean pullbacks on the one-minute chart. It is the newest and least proven, so it trades small.
Day by day, their results have almost nothing to do with each other: the correlation between The Open and The Close is about zero, and so is The Map's with the other two.
The backtest, together
What the evidence says
| The Open and The Close, 1 NQ each | Net, after costs |
|---|---|
| 2020 | About +$45,000 |
| 2021 | About +$62,000 |
| 2022 | About +$27,000 |
| 2023 | About +$35,000 |
| 2024 | About +$110,000 |
| 2025 | About +$103,000 |
| 2026, to October | About +$131,000 |
| Every year since 2020 | Positive, 7 of 7 |
| Back to 2000 | 18 of 26 full years positive |
Per NQ contract at $20 a point, with $2.50 commission and 2 ticks of slippage on each side, on continuous Nasdaq-100 futures intraday bars. Rounded. 2026 runs to late October.
| All three, sized for a $50,000 account | November 2023 to October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Months positive | 83% |
| Return a year | About 42% |
| Worst drawdown | 7% of the account |
Micro contracts: 1 MNQ for The Open and The Close, and about $375 of risk a trade for The Map, with $0.62 commission and 2 ticks of slippage on each side. The Map's figures come from the period it was built on; on 2021 to 2023 data it was about break-even on its own.
Hypothetical results1, not actual trading. The full statement is at the end of this page.
Why three and not one
Every rule has flat stretches. A single rule asks you to sit through them with nothing else working. Three rules that don't move together turn those stretches into slower months instead of losing years. Size is still what keeps you in the game: The Close has no stop, and The Map is sized small for a reason.
Start with the ideas: The Open, The Close and the words The Map uses.
Education only. Nothing here is advice about your account.