I was wondering what other traders do in the early hours of the day. For example, someone who trades on moving averages etc require past data, which, early in the day gives two options: sitting and waiting or using data from the end of the previous day. Sitting and waiting wastes precious hours of trading, whereas using data from the previous day can let overnight price fluctuations interfere with data. Is there some other option that I'm missing?
Sitting and waiting wastes precious hours? That's a new one to me. No position is a position, and more often then not the right one.
Please specify how you define early in the morning (which hours?) and which instruments. Assuming that you mean something like 6:00 am EST and ES futures you might just pull up a DAX chart. Gives you lots of guidance before 8:30 EST. DAX starts at 2:00 am EST.
Too bad you didn't specifically say what trading instruments you're talking about or show a chart example to prevent getting answers that's not helpful. My guess is that you're talking about stocks (not futures or forex) that have gapped (up or down) that makes indicators like moving averages distorted on the charts for awhile soon after the regular trading session opens. Regardless, if you're using indicators that doesn't give you any useful information while you wait for the price to catch up sort'uv speak...you obviously have to wait because there's no trade signals via that indicator. The only logical answer is to develop a trading method specific for situations as you've mentioned that's not dependent upon your indicators. Mark
I couldn't stop laughing when he made the "precious hours" comment. Comments like that do a good job of exposing clueless, wannabe/newbie traders.