" In the last 33 years, if you bought IWM three trading sessions before Christmas, there was a higher close at some point in the next week during all 33 years. For SPY, it was higher at some point 31 out of 33 years. "
Over the past few decades, the end of the year tends to be the worst session for trading. The day range tends to be very little as most of the big boys would go for long holidays. Let's hope this end of the year will be great for trading.
Nowadays all the tradings are done by machines anyway so won't make a difference if those "boys" are going for holidays or not and for this year, thanks to covid, they won't be going anywhere.
Actually the last week of the year is the best for trading. I remember how many times clueless people talked bs about tax selloffs, while pretty much every year the market goes up during the last week:
look at ES end of last year. Its average day range was very very tiny (at around 20 points), very horrific and horrendous. past few weeks, ave day range was around 40 points. This end of the year, I can't go anywhere. So I have to glue myself to the dead, boring trading screens.
Yeah, it may be slow during the last day or generally intraday on some days, but the last week is still generally up. Looks like nights may see the most action...
Machines are always supervised by humans while they trade. No sane firm will leave the machines trading by their own without having humans monitoring their activities and ready to intervene if anything went wrong.
Good points.... main thing is small intraday S&P ranges lately are tough to trade in December... hint when premkt gap size is bigger than intraday ranges it's tougher to daytrade. Minor scr so far but no big daylong rallies or selloffs yet. Look at how tiny the daily S&P candles are on 3month chart lately.... so it's slow swings and daily gappers to focus on.
Well, miracles do happen... In fact, everything always depends on the choice of assets. Because despite the fact that in general the market is quiet and it is impossible to find a strong price movement on numerous positions now, sometimes it is possible to find some strong position and use it for your purposes. But I would definitely not pay attention to long-term positions right now, and would rather concentrate on short-term positions to keep everything under control. Because right after the holidays, the market could drastically change direction and you can't foresee that right now. So don't increase your risks, even at a time like this, and everything will be just fine.