The markets are very much, "monkey-see-monkey-do" all around the world. Hard to take advantage of it, as most of the pop or drop is discounted on the opening gap. When the USSA markets change big, the overseas ETFs traded here already reflect the change before the foreign makets open.
This is exactly correct. In fact, large gaps caused by extreme moves in the US market tend to lead to gap-and-range days in the Asian markets, which are actually harder to trade (for me at least) then when the US markets stay within a 1% move.
"USSA" I'm only looking at intraday yahoo charts for the Nikkei, but it usually shows the opening 15 to 30 mins tradeable in US direction. Data could be wrong. Yahoo isn't exactly Reuters. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^N225#chart1:symbol=^n225;range=1d;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
I focus on STW (Taiwan), and it has been a snore fest. It has had a decent range from high to low, but the action is incredibly slow and unmotivated, which is very typical on large gap days. Amazingly I'm finishing with a decent profit. The previous week's action was much nicer when the US was making smaller intraday moves. I keep a chart of the Nikkei on my screen and their opening 2 hour session had a 20 tick range... perfect example. Maybe some traders like that action, but it puts me to sleep.