What sparked that rally today around 3:30?

Low volume and a lot of scared short positions.

Crazy... gold dropped $30 in about 1 second

at 3:30 PM EST yesterday:

- market generally oversold in the big picture
- at the time, market was in a pullback off of a short term uptrend for the day, a day in which we had an upside reversal from earlier heavy selling
- too many Bears

Can you say HFT?

In the words of Mick Jagger........"just like a new born baby.......it just happens everyday"

See attached zerohedge excerpt.........this is a trade I call the "push into the close"

I first learned about this from Damon Pavlatos......Linda Raschke's husband.

TIME OF DAY

sidney7g 

What sparked that rally today around 3:30?

There was quite a bit of buy programs going off at that time, which is evident from both the $TICK and $PREM charts, which as Jeff pointed out, is a daily occurrence caused by portfolio re-balancing among the leveraged ETFs.


https://seekingalpha.com/article/131795-leveraged-etfs-new-source-of-systemic-risk


https://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2009/04/leveraged-etfs-making-volatility-more.html

Same as yesterday...

thank you everyone, Cash close is something i am working on getting the hang of. that last half hour catches me off guard sometimes.