Earnings HFT gapsThe gaps that form during earnings season on or the next day after the CEO reports the revenues and income for that past quarter are always HFT driven. The concern over the past 2 previous quarters was the fact that the High Frequency Trading Firms were incorporating Artificial Intelligence into their Algos to make automated trading decisions on the millisecond scale. These small lot orders fill the ques milliseconds ahead of the market open in the US and any huge quantity of ORDERS (not lot size) causes the computers of the public exchanges and market to gap up or gap down, often a huge gap.
This can be problematic for those of you who use Pre Earnings Runs to enter a stock in anticipation of a positive to excellent earnings report for this upcoming quarter.
The HFT algos had several major flaws in the programming that did the opposite: The AI triggered sell orders rather than buy order causing the stock price to gap down hugely on good earnings news.
Be mindful that normal gaps due to a corporate event are far more reliable and consistent.
When you trade during earnings season, be aware that there is still added risk of an AI making a mistake and causing the stock to gap and run down on good news.
It is important to calculate the risk factors until it is evident by the end of this earnings season that the errors within the AI programming have been corrected and that the AI will gap appropriately to the actual facts rather than misinterpreted information.
