Anyone know what causes price spikes like the one today in oil at the end of the trading session? It went up about 70 ticks in 2 minutes. If it's a huge buy order why would a company place an order all at once like that? I could see it being a vacuum due to a lack of sellers since it was late in the day on a Friday afternoon, but who did all the buying? The volume on the last bar was 3,797 contracts.
CL does this all the time at closing, and other times. Is just some big banks, or even a bunch of little people unloading before the weekend. A lot of shops require you to close positions in CL before the close because of this.
I know it happens all the time; I was just curious why it happens. It doesn't seem like a professional institution would just dump in a huge order with 2 minutes to go until close. That doesn't seem very professional. Doesn't seem like there would be a ton of amateurs all exiting at the same time either. There wasn't really anything too compelling to trap a bunch of bears at that time..............it was just kind of range-bound the last 3 hours. Maybe it has something to do with hedging or options or something a little more complex than just simple buy orders.
This does happen on Fridays often especially Friday's before expiration. Maybe today was a flash pop instead of crash. But seriously check this chart out, i have the same chart only 2 day older on that other guys cl thread. Price went down and simply tested the breakout area from yesterday. So with that in mind along with such a fast decline earlier and it being a friday. It made for a perfect storm for short covering and eod traders looking to fade the decline. Also notice how it stopped going up right where all those wicks from earlier in the day occurred at .30. It's pretty fucking beautiful. Of course the sunday night bull shit will mess up this pretty picture. Unless it gaps down to 107.80