It sounds like an inefficiency has been arbed out of the market. So many people trade gaps that they probably started anticipating them - there are probably traders that are now putting on trades in the globex session when the price gets above or below the closing price by a certain amount. The result would be that by the open the next morning, the market would have traded back toward the prior day's close.
Another thing I notice is a lack of follow through at the end of the day in the last half year. Rarely does the NAZ 100 seem to close at its session highs or lows anymore. But in the 5 year bubble phase, it often accelerated upwards in the late afternoon on up days, and screamed downwards in the late afternoon on down days. And that kind of thing just doesn't seem to be happening much lately at all. I wonder if its just a temporary phase we are in this year, and if volatility will return again next year, or whenever..... Will we see lots of gap openings and afternoon follow throughs again in the future, or is that a relic of the bubble market era?
This is not limited to the NQ, same deal with the S&P's. I don't have data but I do have a very strong impression that high or low tick closes have definitely become rarer. I don't think it was a bubble market phenomenon either, as that type of close was very common before the bubble. I wonder if globex is not to account for this, as many traders are heavily margined intraday and have to close out by 3:50.
I look at the situation as a deep and abiding realization by the public of how bad things are in the US and around the world. Personally, looking at it for 47 years, we are in a situation that is quite frightening and we made it the way it is. I am really upbeat and usually proactive, etc ,etc.... but a lot of stuff is going down the drain for a whole lot of people. What you are seeing is people freezing up all over the place. The context of the market under this setting and regime of things, does provide a terrific platform for making money. Many many aspects are no longer there to have to content with. Money, as a commodity for use, is so cheap, but the suppliers are not dolling it out mostly because no one is seeking it. A very small group of people have really set the course of things on both sides of the world's strugglings. The rest of the world has to sweat out all this unreasonableness.