September 28, 2006
A Look at RHAT’s After-Hours Action
RHAT blew up after-hours when they reported bad Q2 earnings. It’s easy to see what’s moving after-hours and look for low-risk spots to enter. Do any of you play after-hours action exclusively or know someone who does? It makes sense to me, but the 12-hour time difference makes it impossible for me to consider now.
Cat: | Time: 10:26 am (utc+8)
September 28th, 2006 at 10:51 am
I heard that after hours was called Amateur Hour. Schwab ppl told me that the spread can be VERY wide as well.
September 28th, 2006 at 11:25 am
How do you trade after-hours?
September 28th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
BBC: Yes, but if something is very active like RHAT was then the spread should be pretty tight, relatively speaking.
zied: Fidelity provides a pretty good FAQ about extended-hours trading.
E*Trade’s Extended Hours FAQs
And this from a CyberTrader Q&A, which makes absolutely no sense to me. In fact, it sounds like a non-native speaker answers their questions:
September 28th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Nice. I was in RHAT during normal hours but that was too late and it closed for zero p&l. Managed to catch DIVX though.
There’s no way I can do after hours either with the 12 hours difference.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Eyal: Does IB let you short after-hours do you know? Ever tried?
September 28th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Never tried.. might try it out if I’m awake at 4-5am one day :)
September 28th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Eyal: I guess we’re going to have to ask Mike and Ugly about it.
September 28th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
After hours is a wonderful place - what you are dealing with is a stock and a price - the players are different - but it is sometimes an excellent entry point for the next day. The NASDAQ website has the previous pre and after market activity so you can see what happened in the previous am/pm/am
paul
September 29th, 2006 at 12:04 am
i’ve had trouble finding reliable pre/post data to plug into metastock. do you mind if i ask what data vendor you use?
thanks for the wonderfully informative site. keep up the great work.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:10 am
Pre-hours trading - have people tried this? I noticed that institutional investors move stock pre-hours often, using this website.
September 29th, 2006 at 6:49 am
appletoast: I use Qcharts from Quote.com which is now owned by eSignal.
September 29th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Pre-market trading can be very profitable as long as the liquidity is there otherwise just wait for the Open.
September 29th, 2006 at 8:01 am
CMaoxian: You had a good thing going with the day trading back in the day, what made you pull up the stakes if you don’t mind me asking?
September 29th, 2006 at 9:15 am
StockRoach: A couple of things: we had a baby and moved from London to Beijing — two major changes which required me to switch gears. I plan to day trade again, but just haven’t gotten around to it. ;-)
September 29th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
CM,
nice to hear that your are considering picking up daytrading again…maybe setting up a webcast like the weekly lesson shows by dave landry (at http://www.davelandry.com/webcast.htm)
looking forward to it…
(-:
September 30th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Peter: Yes, I plan to make use of those flash-type trading lessons at some point, tentatively titled: “How to Take Losses in a Flash.” ;-)
October 3rd, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I daytrade after hours just during earning season, otherwise the liquidity is usually not present. I select only Nasdaq stocks for both longs and shorts (and no uptick is required for shorting in extended hours btw). No dynamic stops or market orders are allowed either. During earnings season, I can usually count on a few trades per week that meet my criteria.
The candles should be tight and playable, just like regular hours. From my experience, premarket trading is not worth the effort. Though afterhours is around 10pm to midnight in my time zone, it is still worth putting in a few more extra trading hours during earnings season, so I keep my trading platform running after market close so I can watch my low/high ticker for candidates.
I do the same kind of research as for my regular hour candidates, short interest, float, reason for the move, support and resistance on various time frames before I decide if an opportunity is present.
October 5th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Another aspect of afterhours trading, is that the session is 4 hours long, with most of the tradeable action taking place within the first 2 hours. Therefore the trend, whether up or down, is pronounced, and clear to read when present, so probability for success is high. Usually there are 2 legs in the trend move, separated by bull/bear flags. I catch the second leg of the move and close the position, once the measured move target is reached. Not many afterhours trades during earnings season meet my criteria, but when they do, they usually work very successfully.
October 5th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Michelle: Thanks for your insightful comments … if you have a recent after-hours trade that you are willing to share with me via email, I can grab the data and write a post about it… that might interest folks.