Joseph Plazo began his TEDx talk with a jolt: “If you don’t know how to trade the 9:30 AM open, you’re not trading the market—you’re trading its shadows.”
He emphasized that the volatility at 9:30 AM isn’t chaos—it’s liquidity engineering performed by institutions and automated systems.
1. “The Market Opens Where Liquidity Is Needed”
Plazo illustrated that the opening print is designed to facilitate institutional execution, not retail convenience.
2. The First 5 Minutes Are a Trap—By Design
According to Plazo, this is the “institutional collection phase”—a predictable maneuver disguised as chaos.
The Plazo Principle: Wait for the Kill Shot
Plazo revealed that here the first true signal comes when the market delivers a displacement candle—a powerful, directional move showing where smart money has chosen to go.
4. The NY Open Runs on Liquidity, Not Indicators
He explained that institutions trade liquidity sweeps, Fair Value Gaps, pre-market imbalances, and opening range deviations—not moving averages.
5. The Opening Range Strategy
A break and retest of this range—combined with displacement and a liquidity sweep—creates one of the highest-probability trades of the entire day.
What the Audience Never Expected
When the talk ended, the crowd understood something they’d never considered:
the New York Open isn’t chaotic—it’s engineered.
And if you learn the engineering, you learn the trade.
Joseph Plazo transformed the NY Open from a mystery into a map—one that traders can follow with confidence, discipline, and institutional logic.