Learning how to find opening gaps is essential for day traders looking to capitalize on significant price movements. Opening gaps occur when a stock opens at a substantially higher or lower price than the previous day’s close, creating opportunities for traders to profit from momentum continuations or reversals. Benzinga Pro makes finding these gap opportunities simple with three powerful tools: Movers, Signals, and Scanner.
Why Trade Opening Gaps?
Gap trading remains one of the most popular day trading strategies because it offers clear entry signals based on significant price action. When a stock gaps up or down at the market open, it often indicates strong buying or selling pressure driven by overnight news, earnings reports, or market sentiment shifts. Traders can position themselves to ride the momentum if the gap continues, or fade the move if they anticipate a reversal to fill the gap.
How to Find Opening Gaps: Setting Up Your Workspace
To efficiently scan for opening gaps, you’ll want to create a dedicated workspace that combines Benzinga Pro’s most effective gap-finding tools. Here’s how to get started:
Start by opening a new workspace and adding three essential tools in this order: Movers, Signals, and Scanner. The tools will arrange themselves in the sequence you open them, so follow this order for optimal workflow.
Configure Movers to Find Opening Gaps
Movers is a lightweight scanner designed to surface stocks experiencing rapid price changes. This tool updates every minute and displays the top 100 stocks based on percentage change from your selected filters.
To set up Movers for gap trading, select whether you want to track gainers or losers. Make sure the correct trading session is selected—typically you’ll want the regular session to see how stocks are gapping from the previous close. Keep the period set to “Session” if you want to measure the full gap size for that trading period.
You can apply additional filters for price range and market capitalization if your trading strategy focuses on specific stock characteristics. Once your filters are configured, click the blue filter bar to minimize the filter fields and maximize screen space for results.
Pro tip: You can open multiple Movers tools—one for gainers and another for losers—to monitor both sides of the market simultaneously.
Set Up Signals for Real-Time Gap Alerts
The Signals tool uses Benzinga Pro’s proprietary algorithms to flag price and volume-related events in real time. For gap trading, you’ll want to enable two specific signal types: Opening Gap signals and Price Spike signals.
Opening Gap signals identify stocks that gap at the market open, while Price Spike signals alert you to significant intraday movement that often follows a strong gap. Together, these signals create a comprehensive alert system that keeps you informed of gap opportunities as they develop throughout the trading session.
All configured signals can be saved as a workspace configuration for quick access in future trading sessions.
Configure Scanner to Find Opening Gaps with Precision
The Scanner tool provides the most robust filtering and customization options. While Movers gives you quick visibility into large movers, Scanner allows you to dig deeper with custom columns and advanced filters.
To optimize Scanner for gap trading, add these essential columns by clicking the column tab on the right side: % Gap, % from Open, Relative Volume, and multiple Average Volume periods (10-day, 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day).
Understanding the difference between % Gap and % from Open is crucial. The % Gap column shows the gap percentage from the previous session’s close, including pre-market movement. The % from Open column displays only the gap from the official market open, excluding pre-market activity. Choose the metric that aligns with your trading strategy.
The Relative Volume column helps you identify gaps with strong volume support, which typically indicates more sustainable moves. Comparing current volume against 10-day, 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day averages gives you context about whether the gap is attracting unusual interest.
Once you’ve added these columns, you can sort by any metric to quickly identify the most promising gap opportunities. The Scanner updates in real time, so you’ll always see the latest data as market conditions evolve.
How to Find Opening Gaps: Putting It All Together
With Movers, Signals, and Scanner configured, you now have a comprehensive system to identify opening gaps. Movers provides at-a-glance visibility into the largest percentage movers. Signals delivers real-time alerts as gaps develop and evolve. Scanner offers detailed analytics to evaluate gap quality based on volume, price action, and historical context.
This three-tool approach ensures you won’t miss significant gap opportunities while also providing the data you need to make informed trading decisions. Whether you’re looking to trade gap continuations, fade gap reversals, or simply monitor market volatility, Benzinga Pro’s suite of tools gives you a professional-grade solution for finding and analyzing opening gaps.
Start Finding Opening Gaps Today
Gap trading strategies require speed, accuracy, and reliable data. Benzinga Pro delivers all three with tools specifically designed for active traders who need to identify opportunities as they emerge. If you haven’t experienced Benzinga Pro yet, start your free trial today and discover how easy it is to find opening gaps and other high-probability trading setups.
You can trading gaps today with a 14-day free Benzinga Pro trial right here.