I think the problem is with the definition in the study. As I mentioned in my previous post, an overnight upgapping market that fills the gap by coming back to the previous closing price doesn't cause any market rise. By the time it fills the gap the gain is exactly ZERO. Now if after that it returns to rally mode, then ALL THE GAINS HAPPENED DURING REGULAR MARKET HOURS. End of story... Please post here the upgaps that got never filled (there aren't that many). Add them together. Do they account for all market gains since the 90s? Surely, they are not... I will help you out checking just this year. I see maybe 5 unfilled upgaps adding up to about 50-60 ES points in about 70 trading days. Yet the market is up YTD 400+ points. So about 1/7th of the market gains ( 14%) happened during overnight this year.
Gap fills shouldn't change the conclusion of this data set. If the S&P gaps higher by 50pts, fills and ends the day 60pts higher, the actual gain for the day(RTH) is only 10pts, not 60pts. Only a person with the ability to time the market perfectly would have netted the full 60pt gain.
Surely it should. If I can buy in during RTH and get the exact same gain than you buying yesterday, than what difference does it make? No, you are wrong, the actual gain for the day is 60 points. How do I know? Because it say so in the data at the end of the day. Now if the market runs away from the open and keeps rallying, then you would be correct. My gain could be just 10 points no matter what time I bought during RTH. But those days are rare as I showed, this year only about 14%.
Of course it wouldn't make a difference if you are a trading god who can buy the troughs every single time, but this isn't what the data set is about. It only measures the actual RTH gain (which is 10pts in my example), and that pales in comparison with the ETH gain. Like I said the gain for the day doesn't matter unless you are able to perfectly day trade the market, this data set obviously doesn't into account intraday trades that require timing, it only represents the actual RTH gain/loss (open to close). The conclusion is that most of the gains occur during ETH, you would severely underperform the market if you bought the RTH open and sold the close every day.
Nope, in your example it is still 60 points. We have to distinguish between filled and unfilled gaps aka gains during ETH that got eliminated during RTH and those that are not. That is a huge difference and that is what caused the start of this thread. This isn't about timing and being a trading god. It is about definition. When the upgap/downgap fills, the gain/loss is ZERO. End of story. At that point it is irrelevant that there was a gap, because at this point THERE IS NO GAIN ANYMORE. Any further gain happens during RTH. Now we could go around and around beating this difference to death, but none of us will change our minds, so we can pretty much stop the discussion here. I explained to the OP what causes the confusion, and this is it.
I will use an analogy to explain why this definition difference matters: Let's say we are 2 generals of the same army in a long battle. You advance our soldiers by 2 miles into the enemy lines, yeay, we have a gain, we are winning. But then they beat you back and the positions are eventually back where we started. (and a battle is at even) Now I advance our army 3 miles into the enemy lines when darkness falls. We don't know how the battle will eventually end, but we are winning. But the fact that you did an advance and a retreat doesn't matter because I had to start from scratch right where you started from. So your effort was irrelevant to my advance.
We have another data denier here. We need to start a hall of shame. It's historical data, genius. The same data we all have acces to. The problem is you don't understand the study.
Sir, you are a moron. I didn't deny the data, I disagreed on the definition. Your post didn't add anything to the discussion, neither refute my argument. Have a good day and God bless your little heart.
The parameters of the study were clear. The data is there to verify, and a number of us have with our own historical data sets. You are talking about different parameters, which makes it an entirely different study. That's fine, but don't say this study is wrong. It's just how it chose to slice and view the data.
Not liking a definition is different than it being wrong. That is the point I am making. You have a good day as well.