What could be the cause of a extreme high/low price in after hours market?
"Often these types of trades fall into two different categories.   An error by broker or exchange.  Exchange clearing out part of their books incorrectly is an example.  Most exchanges make firms reopen their positions for after market hours.  There may have been an issue doing so or exchange could incorrectly cancel positions.  I was in the direct feed industry for years and this was a big issue.  At the same time the broker can issue a no limit buy on accident (or has software that is prospecting and said software has a bug or written poorly).   unscrupulous parties looking to feign an upswing or downswing in market.  Let's say you hold 500k shares in a stock that sells for $11.  You could possibly buy 100 shares for $13.  Trust me you will find a seller.  Then you are hoping that people see that trade as a ""norm"" and trade from there, allowing you to rake in $1M for spending an extra $200 - NOTE this is not normal and an extreme example.  This was so common in the early days of NASDAQ after hours that they discontinued using the after hours trades as part of historical information that they keep like daily/yearly high or closing price.  The liquidity allows for manipulation.  It isn't seen as much now since this has been done a million times but it does still happen." Many of the above comments are correct about illiquidity.  If someone needs to trade at a time of low liquidity, for instance when the markets are closed, the bid/ask spread can often be large to induce someone to trade at odd times.  Especially as the broker/bank on the other side of the trade can't immediately go to the market to close out the risk as they often prefer to do. In this case the jump is actually is large but not that large (~4%).  Note this trade price is near the close price on the day before. The system I use shows a trade that evening for 5 shares near the price on the graph.  If you called me after I was done with work and tried to buy 5 shares I'd quote you a bad price too.
"Most markets around the world have been downtrending for the last 6 to 10 months. The definition of a downtrend is lower lows and lower highs, and until you get a higher low and confirmation with a higher high the downtrend will continue. If you look at the weekly charts of most indexes you can determine the longer term trend. If you are more concerned with the medium term trend then you could look at the daily charts. So if your objective is to try and buy individual stocks and try to make some medium to short term profits from them I would start by first looking at the daily charts of the index your stock belongs to. Only buy when the intermediate trend of the market is moving up (higher highs and higher lows).  You can do some brief analysis on the stocks your interested in buying, and two things I would add to the short list in your question would be to check if earnings are increasing year after year. The second thing to look at would be to check if the earnings yield is greater than the dividend yield, that way you know that dividends are being paid out from current earnings and not from previous earning or from borrowings. You could then check the daily charts of these individual stocks and make sure they are uptrending also. Buy uptrending stocks in an uptrending market. Before you buy anything write up a trading plan and develop your trading rules. For example if price breaks through the resistance line of a previous high you will buy at the open of the next day. Have your money management and risk management rules in place and stick to your plan. You can also do some backtesting or paper trading to check the validity of your strategy. A good book to read on money and risk management is - ""Trade your way to Financial Freedom"" by Van Tharp. Your aim should not be to get a winner on every trade but to let your winners run and keep your losses small." "There has been almost no inflation during 2014-2015. do you mean rental price inflation or overall inflation? Housing price and by extension rental price inflation is usually much higher than the ""basket of goods"" CPI or RPI numbers. The low levels of these two indicators are mostly caused by technology, oil and food price deflation (at least in the US, UK, and Europe) outweighing other inflation. My slightly biased (I've just moved to a new rental property) and entirely London-centric empirical evidence suggests that 5% is quite a low figure for house price inflation and therefore also rental inflation. Your landlord will also try to get as much for the property as he can so look around for similar properties and work out what a market rate might be (within tolerances of course) and negotiate based on that. For the new asked price I could get a similar apartment in similar condos with gym and pool (this one doesn't have anything) or in a way better area (closer to supermarkets, restaurants, etc). suggests that you have already started on this and that the landlord is trying to artificially inflate rents. If you can afford the extra 5% and these similar but better appointed places are at that price why not move? It sounds like the reason that you are looking to stay on in this apartment is either familiarity or loyalty to the landlord so it may be time to benefit from a move." "The opposite of an economic bubble is a bubble burst :p! Jokes aside though, an economic bubble occurs when the economy is in bull market mode and asset prices are growing very fast. It's usually measured by ratio's like price to earnings and the levels of various market indices. So, the opposite would be when valuations are falling very fast or are very low, and price to earnings ratios are low.  This condition is usually a recession. A recession is a market slowdown, generally after a bubble bursts, and severe recessions can become depressions if they last long enough (Great Depression, 1930s).  A bubble is not necessarily negative - stock prices usually rise a lot so paper wealth is greatly magnified. If you can get out in time, you're golden. Similarly, a recession isn't bad for everyone. Some investors keep large amounts of cash waiting for recessions so they can ""buy low, sell high"". For most people, however, recessions are negative because unemployment increases and some people get fired, and the economy slows down. Asset prices have fallen so their investments are worth less than they used to be (on paper), and people mainly have to bide it out until the market starts growing again." Nothing is guaranteed - candlesticks are not crystal balls nor is any part of technical analysis. Candlestick patterns used correctly and in combination with other western technical indicators can increase the probability of a trade going into the derived direction, but they are not a guarantee - which is why you should always use stop losses with your candlestick or any trading. In saying that, another candlestick pattern that can provide high probability trades is the Doji, or a combination of Dojis in a row at a market extreme. Note that both Engulfing patterns and Dojis work best at price extremes (highs and lows) and in combination with other technical indicators such as an overbought momentum indicator at a market high, or an oversold momentum indicator at a market low. EDIT - An Example Here is a sample trade I placed on the 17th October and am currently 15.6% in profit on. See the chart below as it shows taking the trade on the open of the following day after a bullish engulfing pattern appeared at the bottom of a downtrend on the 16th in combination with the Slow Stochastic crossing over in the oversold region (below 20%). I would consider this a high probability trade and have placed an initial stop loss at 10% below my open price in case the trade went against me. As the price moved up I moved the 10% stop loss up as a trailing stop loss. My profit target is set at 25% or $4.00. This happens on dark pools quite often. If I am a large institutional investor with tens of millions of shares, I may want to unload slowly and limit the adverse affects on the price of the stock. Dark pools offer anonymity and have buyers / sellers that can handle large volume.  In the case of a day trader, they often trade stocks with light volume (since they have large fluctuations that can be quite profitable throughout the session). At the end of the session, many traders are unwilling to hold positions on margin and want to unload fast. No, it is just normal sideways action.  Think of this week kind of like October 14th - October 20th. It is a day traders week. If you're not day trading then either do after hours trading at the second of the news, or buy/sell on thursday (i'm bullish).  This is normal market activity. I wouldn't consider it out of the ordinary. When there is sideways action there is always good times to both buy and sell, if you realize it. For example, today is the perfect day to buy ... maybe when $SPX is 1240-1244. "I've alway thought that it was strange, but the ""price"" that gets quoted on a stock exchange is just the price of the last transaction. The irony of this definition of price is that there may not actually be any more shares available on the market at that price. It's also strange to me that the price isn't adjusted at all for the size of the transaction. A transaction of just 1 share will post a new price even if just seconds earlier 100,000 shares traded for a different price. (Ok, unrealistic example, but you get my point.) I've always believed this is an odd way to describe the price. Anyway, my diatribe here is supposed to illustrate the point that the fluctuations you see in price don't really reflect changing valuations by the stock-owning public. Each post in the exchange maintains a book of orders, with unmatched buy orders on one side and unmatched sell orders on the other side. If you go to your broker and tell him, ""fill my order for 50,000 shares at market price"", then the broker won't fill you 50,000 shares at .20. Instead, he'll buy the 50 @ .22, then 80 @ .23, then 100 @ .30, etc. Because your order is so large compared to the unmatched orders, your market order will get matched a bunch of the unmatched orders on the sell side, and each match will notch the posted price up a bit. If instead you asked the broker, ""open a limit order to buy 50000 shares at .20"", then the exchange will add your order to the book: In this case, your order likely won't get filled at all, since nobody at the moment wants to sell at .20 and historically speaking it's unlikely that such a seller will suddenly appear. Filling large orders is actually a common problem for institutional investors: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_16/b3929113_mz020.htm http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/papers/vwap.pdf (Written by a professor I had in school!)" It looks more like someone is trying to pocket the spread.  The trades are going off at the bid then the ask (from what I can tell without any L1 and L2 data, but the spread could be bigger than what the prices show, since the stock looks pretty volatile given the difference between current price and VWAP...).  Looking through the JSE rule books I didn't find any special provisions on how they handle odd lots in their Central Order Book, but the usual practice in other markets is to display only round lot orders. So these 4 share orders would remain hidden from book participants and could be set there to trigger executions from those who are probing for limit orders. Or to make a market with very limited risk.