I've never seen the markets move so much on Sunday nights or from 4:15pm-5am during the week, but then not move a lick during United States session. What is going on? Somebody guns Silver and s&ps every sunday night in thin trading. Like never before. This market can move more between 6pm and 6:15pm on sunday night from friday close than it can move during the entire trading day the next morning after 9:30am NYSE open. It didn't used to be like this until recently.
There are a couple reasons for this: The market goes through periods where a lot of the gain/loss for a 24 hour period is made during regular EST hours and outside of them. Bespoke investment group did some great research in this area you can look up. Obviously it's easier to move the market on lower volume. At the same time be careful putting on large positions since liquidity is lower. Again, obviously if there is any news (e.g. earthquake in japan like last night) then there will be more movement. You can't trade every minute globex is open so you just have to decide which timeframe is best for you given any job requirements/family/personal preference/etc.
You should watch TV more often or read the newspaper...the dramatic change in volatility that's producing price action activity you mentioned is directly related to these events occurring in the world (unrest in middle east, earthquake, tsunami, nuclear plant contamination and so on). Last time I saw this type of change in volatility was in the fall of 2008 via the financial crisis although what's occurring now is nowhere near what we saw in the fall of 2008. Therefore, sad to say that what's happening to our money (financial crisis of 2008) has more impact than peoples lives (1st quarter of 2011). Yet, I do understand the impact of losing one's pension, life savings, victim of a ponzi schemes, lost jobs can be devastating too. Mark