Full Quote: Yes, there's usually news around 3:30. Where I live they'll even run it at 4:00. Would you mind being more specific?
Here's the SPX 5 second chart. I don't see much difference between 3:30 and 2:27:10, 2:37:30, 3:11:15 and 3:35:35, to name a few. I do not trade this time frequency, however, so feel free to take that with a grain of salt.
You have a lot of market wisdom, and life wisdom, to learn, if you feel every movement needs a perfectly rational, logical, explanation behind it that one can foretell ahead of time. To some extent, trading the market daily is part art, part science....a trader can generally, loosely, anticipate the overall movement, but not precisely, technically, rationally. You need a dynamic mind, because deviations can slightly occur...which it did today. As long as a trader can nail partially the anticipated movement, they can succeed and get rich. You don't need to be a complete market prophet.
Four other 5 minute bars earlier today (plus 1 @ 3:00am Eurozone open) that had larger ranges. See ATR on bottom set to 1. Think the only one that was news-related was @ 8:30am.
If you've been living under a rock for most of 2022 I would understand your question, but I don't see anything special about todays late session move... Plenty of 15 point 5-minute candles lately...quite a few larger than that as well.