In a lot of the US futures markets over the last year, the markets will be either up or down a lot in the overnights and do nothing in the day session. How often does the volume at night, exceed the daytime?
The answer to your question is obvious: The night session volume in the dollar ES for example, never exceeds the day time sessions volume. Now that we have that out of the way, think about this: Volume simply portrays interest at a certain price level. It's not like more buying or selling is happening. There is always one buyer for every seller. So now I ask, what's confusing? There are variables behind the scenes that go into the calculation of an instruments price, no?
Rarely if ever I would think. Keep in mind the thin overnight sessions make it easier for the big players to manipulate price.
The two worth mentioning are supply and demand, but I think because of the globalized world some markets are linked price-wise. Therefore the impact of supply and demand would come from many sources rather than just one. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
The overnight movements are just correlated with Eur/USD, DAX, FTSE, etc. which start moving 2-3am. But the volume will never exceed daytime; the few volume spikes you see are right at the European opens/economic numbers or are resting stops.
Todays ES trade is a good example of no volume or market movement in the day session. The lowest price it traded after the opening was up 34 points and the market is up another point of 2 from there. Since the day session volume is greater then night session, it appears there is a lot of market manipulation going on in the night session to push the market one way or the other, just to chop the hell out of the daytraders in the US day session. Makes me wonder who is really in control of the Video Game.
a lot of central bank interventions happen during non peak hours (non europe/us) specifically to get more bang for the buck and the central bankers flat out admit this.