Why Day Trading Emaar Properties is Very Difficult — Stock Analysis — GCC Market Analytics
Why Day Trading Emaar Properties is Very Difficult | GCC Market Analytics

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Why Day Trading Emaar Properties is Very Difficult

Well done if you've been profitably day trading or short-term trading Emaar Properties.  In fact, very well done.

Why the congratulations?  Because of this:



The chart above shows three representations of Emaar's share price movement since 2004. The blue line is the resulting price movement if you had bought Emaar at the close every day and sold it next day at the open.  This is the overnight price movement of Emaar.  The red line is the resulting price movement if you had bought Emaar at the open every day and sold at the close on the same day.  This is referred to as the daytime price movement.  The green line is the combination of the overnight and daytime price movements and results in the actual share price movement of Emaar.

Now, these are not meant to represent actual Emaar trading strategies but are instead shown to highlight the price action of Emaar and where price gains/losses have occurred.  As you can see, the overnight price movements have generally been positive, even during the carnage when Emaar's share price dropped from AED 30 to AED 3.  The daytime price movement, however, has been consistently negative.

Based on the above we could generalise as follows:  Emaar's share price has tended to fall in value during the daytime trading session whilst gaining in value overnight leading to a higher opening price than the previous close.

This is a big problem for short-term traders and especially day traders because they generally have to rely on Emaar's share price rising in value in order to make money.  With Emaar's share price performing so poorly during the daytime session that's going to be difficult.

And it gets worse.  The results above do not include fees and brokerage commissions.  When these are taken into account things get a whole lot worse. 

Conclusion

If you're currently day trading or short-term trading Emaar and losing money this probably explains why.  If you're thinking of starting to day trade Emaar hopefully this will make you reconsider.

In future posts I'll look into whether this overnight/daytime effect is similar for other stocks and across other markets.

Enjoy.