This guide covers the stock-scanner workflow. TradeBeagle also includes Overnight Crypto beta for weekday nights and Saturday. Explore all three scanners and their hours.
Every stock has a normal amount it moves in the first thirty minutes of trading. Some mornings it moves far more than that. The Opening Reversal Trade Scanner exists to answer one narrow question as fast as possible: which stocks are moving an unusually large amount right now, relative to how much they normally move?
That's it. It doesn't predict direction, and it doesn't claim a reversal has already started. It just narrows several thousand tickers down to the handful worth a second look.
The benchmark: ATR(15)
To know whether a move is “unusual,” you first need to know what “normal” looks like for that specific stock. A $400 stock and a $12 stock don't move the same number of dollars in a typical morning, so a flat dollar threshold wouldn't work across the board. That's what Average True Range (ATR) is for: it measures a stock's normal trading range over a recent stretch of time, in that stock's own terms.
The scanner uses a 15-period ATR — a close variant of the standard 14-period ATR most charting platforms default to — calculated from the greatest of three measurements for each period: the high minus the low, the high minus the previous close, and the low minus the previous close. Averaging that over the prior 15 periods gives a rolling sense of the stock's typical range. It says nothing about direction. A stock can have a large ATR while trending calmly, or a small ATR the morning before it explodes.
What “abnormal” looks like
Once the scanner knows a stock's typical range, it compares that to what's actually happened since the 9:30 ET open. A stock trading within roughly its normal range isn't unusual — it's just an average morning. A stock that has already moved two or three times its typical range in the first few minutes is behaving differently than it normally does, and that's the signal the scanner is built to surface.
Illustrative comparison of a typical opening range against an abnormal one, both measured against the same ATR(15) benchmark. Not real trade data.
The scanner ranks candidates by how far outside their normal range they've moved — highest first — so the top of the list is where the most unusual activity of the morning is concentrated.
Key takeaway: ATR(15) is a range benchmark, not a direction signal. A high ATR reading means a stock is moving abnormally — it says nothing about which way.
What this tells you, and what it doesn't
An abnormal opening range means something is happening: unusual volume, a news catalyst, an overnight gap working itself out, or simply more participation than usual. It does not mean the move is about to reverse, continue, or do anything predictable. That's deliberate. The scanner's job is to point your attention at the stocks where the first 30 minutes are behaving unusually — not to tell you what happens next. What happens next is a judgment call that belongs on your own chart, with your own risk plan.
The context next to each candidate
The dashboard also shows RSI, a daily moving-average setup, MACD, and a Catalyst Risk rating next to each candidate, and tints each row by its scan label. None of these change the ranking. They're context for deciding which charts to open first. See Reading the Opening Reversal Dashboard for what each one shows.
TradeBeagle provides educational market-scanning tools. Not financial advice. No trade recommendations. Confirm every setup on your own chart and manage your own risk.