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You simultaneously enter two correlated markets one long and one short..
After entry you wait for the spread to narrow or widen, depending on which market you are long/short your spread can move into your favour or against your favour.
So my questions is this, if the spread moves against your favour, why not just wait till it goes back into your favour and close the trade?
The spread is continually narrowing and widening, pushing and pulling, I mean how long would it take till the spread is in your favour again? a few hours? a few days at most? I mean.. am I missing something here?
I can't see your image you posted, so I'm not sure if you are talking about futures or stocks. However, the principles are the same.
Correlations are not stationary - correlations can "break" and stay broken long past your ability to fund the losses. That being said, there is a whole cottage industry of mean reversion spread traders, in both the stocks and futures domain. The stock trading is called "statistical arbitrage." Stat arb strategies can and will blow up with too much leverage and not enough true diversification.
Also, the tightly correlated markets have tight spreads, which limit your returns - especially when transaction costs are taken into account.
