the study of the world futures markets, page-3

superb.

Adding on to Treggs post.

I find that certain time levels affect markets the most, with data points and key risk events taking place virtually everyday, which tends to affect markets quite violently.

I will use Australian EST for reference.

10:30/11:00 am - Margin calls hit brokers' desks. If they are short, they gotta cover, if they are long they gotta sell.

2:15pm - Wall Street Journal gets printed daily. The headlines are usually sensational and cause immense confusion until everyone who has a subscription has cut and pasted (after acting on it of course) to everyone else. It is of no coincidence that some of the more violent moves appear between 2:15 and 2:30pm AEST.

2.30pm - Hang Seng closes for lunch. At this point, there is usually some follow through from the HK dealers (since a fair bit of hedgefunds operate out of HK). This may result in follow through momentum if they didn't get their hedges or positions out in time. It hits the Dow futures (which are highly illiquid) and ASX.

3.30pm - London (6:30am) wakes up and adjusts their BHP/BLT spreads and RIO/Rio plc spreads. Orders usually fly in with 15/20 mins to the close in these two stocks (used to be three, until Brambles got taken out of the Foot). Because of the heavy weighting in these two stocks, it tends to be index moving.