Opening Drive Indicator: Formula, Settings and How to Read It
Opening Drive places at most one marker per session, and only when the session's opening bars — three by default — all close in the same non-zero body direction and their average volume comes out strictly above the average volume of the whole session. A session that does not carry that many loaded bars is skipped entirely.
Senzoukria · Indicators · Updated September 2026
Opening Drive ships with the Senzoukria desktop app, in the Structure & sessions group of the indicator catalogue. It is drawn on the price chart.
What Opening Drive measures
Both tests are required because each alone is insufficient: direction on its own catches slow, low-participation drifts, while volume on its own catches busy but directionless opens. A bar closing exactly at its open breaks the direction test, following the same convention as Consecutive Bars, where a neutral bar interrupts a run. The volume reference is the session's own average, computed over all its bars including the opening ones; that dilution is accepted deliberately because it makes the test more conservative rather than less. Comparison against previous sessions is the job of other indicators, which keeps this one purely intra-session and therefore usable from the very first session loaded. The marker sits on the last bar of the opening window — the bar that confirms the drive — at its high for an upward drive and its low for a downward one, never on the first bar, which would display a signal at a moment it did not yet exist.
The formula, as implemented
This is not a description of how the indicator is usually defined elsewhere — it is what the shipped code computes, documented next to the implementation:
Opening drive — marqueur UNIQUE par séance, RÈGLE EXACTE : 1. la séance porte au moins `minBars` barres chargées ; 2. les `minBars` PREMIÈRES barres ont toutes le même sens de CORPS, NON NUL : signe(close − open) identique et ≠ 0 (un doji casse le drive — même convention que `consecutive-bars`, patterns.ts) ; 3. volume moyen de ces `minBars` barres > volume moyen de TOUTES les barres de la séance (inégalité STRICTE). Marqueur posé sur la DERNIÈRE barre de la fenêtre d'ouverture (celle qui CONFIRME le drive), à son high si le drive monte, à son low s'il descend. Le poser sur la première barre prétendrait qu'on savait avant de savoir : le chart ne doit jamais afficher un signal à un instant où il n'existait pas. POURQUOI : l'ouverture en drive est le motif d'ouverture le plus documenté du Market Profile — une séance qui part d'un bloc, sur du volume, retourne rarement chercher son ouverture. Les deux conditions comptent : la direction seule attrape des dérives molles, le volume seul attrape des ouvertures agitées mais sans direction. Convention de RÉFÉRENCE VOLUME : la moyenne de la séance ELLE-MÊME (qui inclut les barres d'ouverture — dilution assumée, elle rend le test plus conservateur, pas moins). Comparer aux séances PRÉCÉDENTES est le travail de `session-volume-pace` et `time-of-day-volume` ; ici l'indicateur reste intra-séance et fonctionne donc dès la toute première séance chargée. Séance trop courte, doji dans la fenêtre, sens qui change, ou volume pas strictement au-dessus de la moyenne → AUCUN marqueur (jamais de « presque »). Défaut minBars = 3. Aucun tick size requis.
How to read it
- A marker means the opening bars moved as one uninterrupted block while trading above the session's own average volume.
- Because the volume reference is a session average, a marker on a live session can appear or change as more bars arrive and shift that average — it is settled only once the session is complete.
- The absence of a marker is not a weak drive: one of the conditions simply was not met, and the indicator never draws a partial or a near miss.
- Compare the drive's direction against where the session eventually traded, over a series of days, rather than treating any single marker as a read on the day.
- Nothing here describes who was aggressive — open the footprint on the opening bars to see whether the move was carried by market buyers, market sellers, or absorbed by resting size.
Parameters and defaults
The opening bars parameter runs from 1 to 50 with a default of 3. Raising it demands a longer unbroken block of same-direction bars and makes markers considerably rarer, since a single doji or one bar of the opposite colour anywhere in the window disqualifies the session. Setting it to 1 makes the direction test trivial and leaves the volume condition doing all the work. The up and down colours are cosmetic, and no tick size is required.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening bars | number | 3 | 1 – 50 |
What it does not show
The test reads body direction and volume, nothing else: there is no aggressor side and no delta, so a drive carried by buyers lifting offers and one that moved because sellers stepped back are indistinguishable. The session-average reference means the outcome is provisional while the session is still forming, which is a real caveat on live charts. The series must carry volume at all, and the session's opening bars must be loaded; a session whose opening falls outside the loaded history yields nothing. On continuously traded crypto series, the open is whatever the chart's session definition declares it to be. A drive describes how a session started and makes no claim about how it ends.
Using it in Senzoukria
Add it from the Indicators panel of any footprint chart or candle chart. It runs on futures data from Rithmic or Databento and on crypto pairs from Binance and Bybit, on the same engine — the calculation does not change with the venue, only the data feeding it does. Market data subscriptions are billed by the provider, separately from the app.
Related indicators
- Session High/Low — Structure & sessions
- Opening Range — Structure & sessions
- IB Extensions — Structure & sessions
- Classic Pivots — Structure & sessions
- Camarilla Pivots — Structure & sessions
- Naked POC — Structure & sessions
See the full indicator library, or start with the order flow guide if you are new to reading aggression, delta and absorption.
Frequently asked questions
- What is an opening drive?
- An opening drive is a session that begins with a run of bars moving in one direction on above-average participation, rather than rotating around the opening price. It is one of the opening types described in Market Profile literature. This indicator formalises it as three conditions: enough loaded bars, a uniform non-zero body direction across the opening window, and opening-bar volume strictly above the session's own average.
- Why is the opening drive marker on the third bar instead of the first?
- Because the third bar is where the condition is actually confirmed with the default setting of three opening bars. Placing the marker on the first bar would show a signal at a point in time when it could not have been known, and the platform avoids that on principle. The marker sits at the confirming bar's high for an upward drive and its low for a downward one.
- Why did my opening drive marker appear only later in the session?
- The volume condition compares the opening bars against the average volume of the whole session, and that average keeps moving while the session is still trading. A session that did not qualify early can qualify later if subsequent bars are quiet, and the reverse is also possible. The result is settled only once the session has finished.