Mon 6 Aug 2007
This may be a dumb question, but any idea why the market is often surging in one direction or the other primarily starting at 3:30? It’s been more common than not lately, and is strong late market action in-and-of-itself an indicator of some sort?
August 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
One day last week is attributable to a specific incident:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/08/mystery-solved-.html
In general though, the last 30 minutes of trading is when day traders close out their trades; multi-day traders decide whether they want to hold positions overnight; overnight traders try to position themselves for the next day… so it’s a lot of shuffling for position — kinda like playing musical chairs, but everyone knows when the music is going to stop (4pm).
The bigger moves near the close speak to the current uncertainty (in the very short term) in the market. Other than that, I’m not sure if there’s a specific cause…