I am plotting my P&L for two months now and noticed that it always goes down on thursday. I dont daytrade. i hold overnight positions. Till last week i chose to believe that its a coincidence. But it happend again today. I can see two ths were ruined by london bombings. I am thinking about always buying low on ths/fri and sell on wed. But may be I am seeing to much into it and it really is a coincidence. Any suggestions or statistics to support or refute this?
i don't have any data, stats, etc. but i do know my biggest losses have been on thursdays. and not just by a little bit. i trade minis and close trades by EOD, but thursdays have still stuck out for me. i guess i should say my trading has generally sucked on thrusdays. over at: http://www.online-futurestrading.com/example_trading_system.htm i believe the system creator explained why he opted to have no trades on thursday, so there might be some supporting evidence there. hth take care and gtty - omni
There is something to it. There was a pattern on Friday's about a year ago where the market would consistently sell off into the close if the market was trading higher mid-day. Of course this only lasted for several months, but if you became aware of it in enough time, you could do something with it. Just eyeballing the Thursday phenomenon recently, I do see something. It does appear to be the most volatile day recently, but again its a recent event. Thinking out of the box here...Perhaps since summer Friday's are typically less liquid and tend to run positions, especially if there are any economic reports to test the illiquidity of the market, the real positioning or offsetting takes place on Thursday when they at least have some decent liquidity to offset risk...
thurdays---------fed meeting notes, london bombing day, etc thurdays have been the only days with some volatility lately
thurdays have been the only good paydays for the hedgies lately in the equities and futures {other then oil} markets
Thanks for the replies ! Good to know that many of you have noticed the pattern. Also, instead of closing positions on wednessday I was thinking about checking future vs. fair value on ths and fri mornings and close all long positions if its bad. For eg. today future vs. fair value gave good signal that it will be the bad thursday. At one point I felt that I should take profit when market opens. But I didn't and losses piled up by the end of the day. How reliable in your opinion is "future vs. fair value" when it comes to determining direction for the rest of the day (Not just open) I had only one good thursday and that was when I was mainly invested in oil stocks and rest of the market was bad. Also I did notice Bad Friday pattern last year. But I thought that was with war in iraq there was simply higher probability of bad news over weekend days. I am still new to the game and whats happening is I am somehow managing to beat market and then thursday puts me back in line.... week after week I am thinking about 1> Take profit on wednesday and/or 2> Initiate short qqqq. Is there better option than shorting qqqq? One with 2 or 3 times leverage? (I remember reading somewhere that there is some reverse index or something ) appriciate any ideas/suggestions
FWIW, a good book on this topic, although a bit arcane, is Beyond the Random Walk by Singal. There is a pattern as to what funds do and arbs do, so just watch and dont feel the need to be in the market 24/7. When I started just hitting my setups and letting the rest go, it was like a shot of steroids to my P&L.