Are stock prices likely drop off a little bit on a given friday afternoon?
It is called the Monday Effect or the Weekend Effect. There are a number of similar theories including the October Effect and January Effect. It's all pretty much bunk. If there were any truth to traders would be all over it and the resulting market forces would wipe it out. Personally, I think all technical analysis has very little value other than to fuel conversations at dinner parties about investments. You might also consider reading about Market efficiency to see further discussion about why technical approaches like this might, but probably don't work. There are classes of 'traders' who close their positions out every evening, not just on fridays.  But their are other types of businesses who trade shortly before or nearly right at market close with both buys and sells  There are lots of theories as to how the market behaves at various times of day, days of the week, months of the year.  There are some few patterns that can emerge but in general they don't provide a lot of 'lift' above pure random chance, enough so that if you 'bet' on one of these your chances of being wrong are only very slightly different from being right, enough so that it's not really fair to call any of them a 'sure thing'.  And since these events are often fairly widely spaced, it's difficult to play them often enough to get the 'law of large numbers' on your side (as opposed to say card-counting at a blackjack table) which basically makes betting on them not much different from gambling
"4PM is the market close in NYC, so yes, time looks good.  If ""out of the money,"" they expire worthless.  If ""in the money,"" it depends on your broker's rules, they can exercise the option, and you'll need to have the money to cover on Monday or they can do an exercise/sell, in which case, you'd have two commissions but get your profit.  The broker will need to tell you their exact procedure, I don't believe it's universal." It depends completely on the current order book for that security.  There is literally no telling how that buy order would move the price of a stock in general. Volatility typically decreases when stocks rise except pending news events or fast markets.  It has a great impact of the premium of the option. I've never seen a dividend, split or other corporate action during the day, but I have seen trade suspended a few times when something big happened. The market opening price is not in general the same as the close of the previous day. It can gap up or down and does frequently. I don't know of an api to find out if the dividend was cash or stock, but stock dividends are a lot less common. "No it does not.  Candlesticks really have nothing to do with this, a stock price can open different then the previous day's close. Examining the chart of TSLA provides an example it closed on 1/18 at 238.8 it opened on 1/19 at 243.7 In candlestick parlance is is known as a ""gap up""." I feel like when your assets are mostly stock, then your every minute is basically fluctuating by the hundreds of millions and on a ~~good~~  active trading day you could be up or down a few billions. Apparent data-feed issues coming out of NASDAQ in the after hours market. Look at MSFT, AMZN, AAPL, heck even Sears.      Funny thing though, is that you see traces of irregular prices during the active session around 10:20am on stocks like GOOG. 1) Explicitly, how a company's share price in the secondary market affects the company's operations. (Simply: How does it matter to a company that its share price drops?) I have a vague idea of the answer, but I'd like to see someone cover it in detail.  2) Negative yield curves, or bonds/bills with negative yields  Thanks! http://www.marketwatch.com/optionscenter/calendar would note some options expiration this week that may be a clue as this would be the typical end of quarter stuff so I suspect it may happen each quarter. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triplewitchinghour.asp would note in part: Triple witching occurs when the contracts for stock index futures,   stock index options and stock options expire on the same day. Triple   witching days happen four times a year on the third Friday of March,   June, September and December. Triple witching days, particularly the   final hour of trading preceding the closing bell, can result in   escalated trading activity and volatility as traders close, roll out   or offset their expiring positions. June 17 would be the 3rd Friday as the 3rd and 10th were the previous two in the month. Are you kidding? The stock markets just took a nose dive this week. Perfect buying opportunity. Just be sure to dollar cost average your way in to avoid excessive timing risk. Everyone and their grandmother has been expecting QE to taper since May 2013. If the drop is caused by that, then it shouldn't be too serious.  Also, can people stop comparing stuff to 2009? 2009 was a unique once-in-a-lifetime circumstance, and not indicative of actual market values. Okay I don't know where my disconnect was, in my mind I was viewing that as a negative for some reason haha. Thanks! That makes sense.  What is your perspective on the large amount of companies buying back shares right now? Summarized article: On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 275 points and wiped out the last of the index's gains for the year.   Friday's massive selloff was triggered by a dismal US jobs report and data indicating a European and Chinese economic slowdown. Friday was the worst day of the year for the market.   Worried investors moved cash to the US Treasury bond market which also dragged the yield to a record low.   Some analysts believe the panic in the market may cause the Federal Reserve to plan for additional stimulus.   Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to speak next week.   *For more summarized news, subscribe to the [/r/SkimThat](http://www.reddit.com/r/SkimThat) subreddit* Yes, the stock price drops on the ex-dividend date by roughly the amount of the dividend. There is even academic research testing this and confirming that the popular rule of thumb works well. You can't tell for sure.  If there was such a technique then everyone would use it and the price would instantly change to reflect the future price value. However, trade volume does say something.  If you have a lemonade stand and offer a large glass of ice cold lemonade for 1c on a hot summer day I'm pretty sure you'll have high trading volume.  If you offer it for $5000 the trading volume is going to be around zero. Since the supply of lemonade is presumably limited at some point dropping the price further isn't going to increase the number of transactions.   Trade volumes reflect to some degree the difference of valuations between buyers and sellers and the supply and demand.  It's another piece of information that you can try looking at and interpreting.  If you can be more successful at this than the majority of others on the market (not very likely) you may get a small edge.  I'm willing to bet that high frequency trading algorithms factor volume into their trading decisions among multiple other factors.