Friday, January 27, 2012

Like Night and Day

Most of the buying and selling of stocks takes place over the course of Wall Street's trading day, but there are also purchases that occur outside of normal business hours. The Bespoke Investment Group has been looking at the difference in the markets between after-hours trades and the normal trading day, and found something fascinating has been going on.

Bespoke looked at the price moves for the SPY ETF, which tracks the S&P 500. Over the past 50 days, they found, SPY has gained about 6 percent. But during regular trading hours, that same ETF has declined, at an average loss of 0.06 percent per day. It's only in after-hours trading that the issue has gained, with an average increase of 0.20 percent per day.

That's a pretty dramatic shift. Is there any significance to it? The folks at Bespoke don't attach any greater meaning to it, so it may simply be an instance of the markets working in mysterious ways.

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