What's the BEST time to trade?
- Thread starter EMini-Player
- Start date
agree...10-11:15am is the best timeframe. Add 9:40-10am, for experienced traders. Most post-11:30am markets are slow chop, like today, yesterday, etc.
Verify: Look at the last 3 months worth of daily COMPQ charts, and mark out where the biggest runs, moves occurred, each day...then tabulate, by morning vs afternoon, and day of week.
You should find 70%+ of large moves occurred in the morning, before 11:15am, this last few months. This has been the case for a long time. I like trading the open.
and sure, you Could trade all day long, but why? I think the best-odds high-volatility moves occur primarily in the first half of most days, most of the time.
ken
Verify: Look at the last 3 months worth of daily COMPQ charts, and mark out where the biggest runs, moves occurred, each day...then tabulate, by morning vs afternoon, and day of week.
You should find 70%+ of large moves occurred in the morning, before 11:15am, this last few months. This has been the case for a long time. I like trading the open.
and sure, you Could trade all day long, but why? I think the best-odds high-volatility moves occur primarily in the first half of most days, most of the time.
ken
Thanks guys. I guess I've been trading at the right time then 
Somebody posted a spreadsheet (Elitetrader.com?) that I downloaded the other day. It shows the percent of daily range by half hour period for the spoo. For the most part it has steadily increased over the years. For example, in 1989, by 11:30 the spoo had covered 58% of its daily range. That figure for 2001 is 67%. All of the 30 min periods to 12:00 noon showed similar increases, while the afternoon periods were unchanged or had slightly decreased.