Since my system is a trend-follower... it's performance on Fridays in the past 2 months raised a red flag... it had 6 losing Fridays out of 7, or something like that..... narrow range, wiggle jiggle. What's going on? Are some firm's traders forced to take unpaid vacation on Fridays? Maybe need to black out Fridays until NAZ hits 3000 and people's blood boiling again.
I'm having the same situation... 4 straight profit days this week then Friday comes along... sheez... MGB
same here. nowadays i just sleep in on fridays. usually i'm beat by the end of the week anyway...so i'm not complaining!
I never used to do well on fridays, but then I discovered that the problem wasn't the market but my hangovers. Now I usually get up around 10 on fridays and just sit and do nothing til I'm sober enough. It has helped a lot. I don't know, today was one of my 5 best days, so no complaints here. I have found that by 1 or so on fridays, that volume usually drys up and the moves are dull. Seems that people do leave kinda early. That's fine with me, cause i'm usually too tired anyway
I find Fridays only good for morning trading, while the liquidity is there. Even after the bond market closes at 3:00p, when volume in equities often picks up, things usually stay fairly quiet and churn. Occasionally you'll get a decent movement, but mostly not. I know alot of people that either take off on Fridays, or solely trade the morning.
my primary system is a counter-trend system. I more or less fade gaps. Today was pretty neutral for me. No Nasd 100 stocks (except VRSN, which never hit my buy trigger) gapped so I didn't do anything. But the past four Fridays before this were great gap down days that then turned up. Mondays and Tuesdays have been hard for me this past month. But the market seems to relax a little Wed-Fri.
In light of the recent bad news events no one wants to hold onto a stock over the weekend for fear that some really bad news may come along and drive the market down again...that is if you are long...when the news gets better and world events change and our economy gets better ...then you will start to see more rallies on Friday and people holding over the weekend...I could be wrong about this train of thought...but thats why I think Fridays are bad
Other than yesterday, the past four Fridays before that people were eager to hold into the weekend. The Comp closed at or near its peak all four Fridays and most of that was a late day surge. While some of that might have been short covering I, for one, loaded up on QQQ and SPY the past two Fridays before this one just because of the late-day surge. Maybe people are thinking: a. the worst is over b. if there are no new disasters over the weekend, the markets will go up on Monday (which did happen in each case). c. if there is a new disaster then fortunately all the mutual fund redemptions (hence massive selling) already occurred so it won't be as bad as it was Sep 24. Note, though, that yesterday was a Friday without much excitement. The first time in October this occurred. I think this might mean the comp is topping out a bit. But who knows? -James
Vishu, You might be right about it topping...many people may be thinking this...thats why the strong buying dropped off....hmmmmmm.....we'll see