Indeed. There is no "after-hours" in futures, there is only the futures trading hours, which trumps the underlyings' trading hours.
How did I know that the very next post was going to be "overnight" correcting you on that despite us all knowing exactly what you meant? ... So predictable....
WRONG... "after hours" refers to the Globex Session or "over night" session post regular daily Pit traded session after a 15 min close... kinda like trading Cars for Handles... Ya know!
I think its time to extend the trading day, just keep the markets open like the futures markets!!!!! 6.5 hours isn't enough anymore especially now that everything is global and trading can be done from any where anytime.... extended hours is worthless, I have traded after-hours many times but it seems the spreads are just not worth it. It's 2018 not 1957, time to extend the trading day !!!
Yeah, I don't know why this is such a difficult concept to embrace. Futures are obviously trading again at 5:00 pm (CT), they get another jolt around Asian open, then the European open and quite obviously many algo's are gaming these sorts of tendencies, but the cash market (U.S.) is closed and so there is a bit of debate on how much weight to put on the moves (and also chicken vs egg arguments on leading/lagging relationships). But back to the original point. Cash markets and futures markets are closed from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening. No trading taking place, hence the one "pure gap" that isn't subject to debate. It's no coincidence that there have been quite a few meaningful inflection points off of that pain trade (buy Friday into the close hope for gap and go or vice-versa).
Mergers, China news, North Korea, The good news is flowing.....Yes that means the old Sunday opening gap up in index futures. The overnight night magic show will start soon. Good thing Im long.
If there is no trading taking place in the futures, then how can there be a gap in the futures? I have seen it very rarely. Once was a couple of weeks ago, but it was not enough to break any bank for a futures trader. There is no "gap" per se in futures.
I'm a little confused. Isn't a gap where a price opens different than it closes by some non-trivial amount? If so, couldn't there be a gap any time a market closes, even if only for a minute or two?