mid-2-large gaps; gap studies

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Mid-Sized Gaps Up

After the close today, Intel had a good report. Everyone seems happy (unless you’re short Intel.) The Nasdaq futures are juiced and the S&P’s are even up quite a bit as I write this. We stand a good chance of seeing a gap up tomorrow morning. There are some economic reports to deal with before the opening bell so things can clearly change, but it seems like a good idea to expect we may gap in the morning and to plan for it.

Previously I’ve looked at large gaps up as well as large gaps down, and how the market reacted to them in both uptrends and downtrends. Today I will look at mid-sized gaps up.

As a reminder I previously defined a large gap as one over 0.75% for the SPY. The mid-sized gaps I’m looking at tonight are gaps between 0.25% and 0.75%. Once again I will break the results out between mid-sized gaps up in uptrends and mid-sized gaps up in downtrends. You’ll find the results to be quite different from both each other and the large gap studies.

For uptrend vs. downtrend I kept it simple and used the same definition as last time. If the market closes above its 200-day simple moving average, it’s in an uptrend. If the market closes below it, then it’s in a downtrend.

I looked at 3626 trading days going back to 11/17/93. Of those there were 613 mid-sized gaps up in uptrends and 223 mid-sized gaps up in downtrends.

Buying at the open and selling at the close when the market was in an uptrend would have been profitable about 50% of the time. In total the market would have gained 3% over the 613 trades. On a per-trade basis that’s basically break even. Of those gaps up 356 (58%) filled at some point during the day. (A fill in this case is defined as a move back down to the previous day’s close.)

Buying at the open and selling at the close when the market was in a downtrend would have been profitable 54% of the time. In total, though this strategy would have LOST you almost 66% over 223 trades. Per trade that’s close to a 0.3% loss on average from open to close. Of those mid-sized gaps up, 165 (73%) filled at some point during the day. Even with a slightly higher winning percentage these stats are significantly worse than those above dealing with uptrends.

We previously found that large gaps up typically lead to more upside during a downtrend. Most likely this is because shorts get trapped and the market runs as they scramble to cover. Mid-sized gaps are a different animal. They are not as scary for the shorts. Shorts may even see it as an opportunity to add more exposure, while longs look to take gift profits. Whatever the reason, the long-tem downtrend is generally able to re-assert itself during the day and those that bought into the early morning excitement get punished.

When deciding how to approach a gap up in the morning, make sure you consider at least two things: 1) Long-term trend of the market. 2) The size of the gap. They both matter.

Large Gaps Higher In Uptrends vs. Downtrends



At the end of January I showed what happened when the market gapped substantially lower during uptrends vs. downtrends. Surprisingly to many, buying large gaps down in downtrends was far superior to uptrends. Tonight I thought I’d look at another side of this. How do large gaps up fare in uptrends vs. downtrends?

Once again I demanded a 0.75% gap for my trigger using the SPY. I then tabulated the results of buying the gap up at the open and selling it at the close. What I found may again surprise you.

When the market closes above the 200-day moving average, trying to buy a gap has been a losing strategy. Of the 123 instances I found looking back to 1994, only 57 had tacked on more gains by the end of the day. The rest finished down from their opening price. The net total movement of buying all these gaps up and selling them at the close would have been a loss of about 17.4% for the 123 trades.

Downtrends showed a different picture. Buying gaps up of 0.75% or more during downtrends was actually profitable. In this case, 58% of the 105 instances finished with the SPY closing higher than it opened. The net total of the movement from open to close was a gain of about 26% as opposed to the loss we saw above.

I suspect short-covering is a big reason that large gaps tend to spark additional buying in downtrends but not in uptrends. Stops get blown through overnight and when they see the market getting away from them, panic-covering ensues.

Regardless of the reason it appears when the market is below its 200ma the easy money is typically made not by fading the large gap up, but by looking to go long. Fading large gaps up appears to be more fruitful in uptrending markets than down. These results seem to go against conventional wisdom and provide another example of a lesson that many traders may need to “un-learn”.