Open-drive
An open-drive is a session open in which price moves decisively in one direction from the first trades and does not return to the opening price. In Market Profile it is the open type showing the strongest early conviction, usually attributed to other-timeframe participants acting at the open, and it is often the first sign of a trend day.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Definition
At an open-drive, participants arrive with a clear intention and act on it immediately. Price leaves the opening level in the first minutes, pullbacks stay shallow and the open is not revisited during the opening period. It differs from an open-test-drive, where price first checks the other side before driving, and from an open-rejection-reverse, where the first move fails and price trades back through the open.
What the order flow looks like
- Initiative activity from the first prints: aggressive orders in one direction, often with stacked imbalances.
- Delta building with price rather than against it.
- Resting liquidity pulled or consumed ahead of price; pullbacks meet responsive orders quickly.
- The failure signal is simple: a return to the opening price turns the drive into something else.
A worked example
The regular session opens at 5,010.00. In the first five minutes, price trades up to 5,016.00 without printing below 5,009.75, bids refill under each pullback and the footprint shows ask-side imbalances on the way up. By the end of the first half hour, price is at 5,021.00. That is an open-drive up. Had price fallen back to 5,009.00 in the second bracket and traded below the open, the same first minutes would have been the start of an open-rejection-reverse.
In Senzoukria
The Opening Drive overlay, in the Structure & sessions group, places at most one marker per session. Its rule: the session must hold at least the chosen number of loaded bars, three by default ('Opening bars'); those first bars must all have bodies in the same, non-zero direction, a doji breaking the drive; and their average volume must be strictly above the average volume of all the session's bars. The marker sits on the last bar of the opening window, at its high for an up drive and its low for a down drive, because only that bar confirms it. Later bars change the session average and can create or remove the marker, so it is a description after the fact. It follows the indicator engine's sessions, which start at 17:00 Chicago time on CME futures and at 00:00 UTC on crypto: on ES and NQ it describes the Globex open, not the 8:30 regular open. For the regular session, the Market Profile (TPO) overlay with the 'RTH indices (8:30–15:00 CT)' period and 'Open & close markers' shows the open and the first brackets.
Related
- Market Profile open types
- Opening Drive indicator
- Initiative activity
- Trend day
- Opening range
- CME session open
In the same section
This page in other languages
Frequently asked questions
- Does an open-drive mean the day will trend?
- It raises the likelihood in the eyes of Market Profile traders, because it shows strong early conviction, but it is not a guarantee. Some drives stall after the first hour and the session balances. The initial balance width and whether the drive continues to extend are the next pieces of evidence.
- Why does Senzoukria's Opening Drive marker appear or disappear later in the session?
- Because its volume condition compares the opening bars with the average of all the session's bars. As the session continues, that average changes, so the condition can become true or false after the fact. The marker is placed on the bar that completes the opening window, never earlier, and it describes the session as loaded.