Has anyone ever done any statistical analysis of whether gaps up occur more or less often than gaps down ?
========== Tarl; Yes there is an order/opportunity there[position trading], but still can be risky, thats why some trading companies do not permit it.
Thanks, but I was more interested in what the number is, in general. Intuition might say that they should be of equal number, but perhaps for some reason there tends to be more gap ups than downs, or else vice versa. Sounds like something someone in a University might have researched.
Sorry, yes, I forgot to mention that I am referring equities (stocks), either indices or individual stocks. Although information on any instrument might be interesting - I look at these things from a viewpoint of "behavioral finance", ie ways in which human nature affects the action of financial instruments (for example, if someone buys a stock, and it immediately starts a downward movement, they will usually irrationally sell it whenver it reaches the exact price they paid - which causes "resistance levels").
I'm not aware of any statistics, but common sense will say that downward gaps would occur often, since stocks go down faster.
=============== Agree with that, in this context; especially in downtrend or weak markets. Also when you had oil companies being bought /takeovers common; gap ups were common in that sector & they held usually
There was something published here on ET that showed that holding stocks overnight was profitable generaly due to more gap ups than down in the last few decades. You can get Tradestation Radarscreen or use Excel and get the data on your own pretty easily.