Boolean (true and false, or 1 and 0) columns like yours are good in some situations, but if you ever find yourself indexing such a column, you probably crossed the line.
If the values were distributed evenly (50% true and 50% false), MySQL would not even use an index if it were not a coverage index. The cost of finding each row at the secondary index, where most of the data set will be returned, is expensive, so MySQL will perform a simple table scan.
In your case, since you are requesting a smaller distribution (1% false), MySQL may actually use the index.
However, then you need to wonder why you should store so many true values in an index that is not even used, but they slow down the indexes and just free space.
... REVISED ...
Instead, consider saving the external index as another table. Consider adding a table called open_deals with the following structure, where deal_id is the main key for both deals and open_deals:
deal_id ---------- 100 121 135
To get your open trades, simply do the following:
SELECT deals.* FROM open_deals STRAIGHT_JOIN deals ON deals.deal_id = open_deals.deal_id
We use direct join, because we always know that we will connect from left to right, and we get rid of MySQL to think about it.
Since open_deals consists of only one indexed column, the index will act as a coverage index. On a properly configured, hard server, the index will be stored in memory, so the table will be very fast.
The join, internally, will be similar to using your original secondary index, but without the overhead of all unused values.
For best performance, make sure the new values are added to the end of the open_deals table, or, in other words, all new values must be greater than the last, but you do it anyway.
To open a deal, add it to the open_deals table and mark it closed, remove the identifier from the open_deals table.
The advantage is that you do not need to move records between tables to update other indexes (even worse with a clustered InnoDB index). The only index that is updated here is a small index in the open_deals table.