The NY session was very unspectacular with relatively small ranges but as soon as the NY traders turn their screens off at 5pm, the market goes for a run. This is the most illiquid time of the day, between the NY close and the Tokyo open, and it allows bigger players to move the market around with less fear of failure. Once Tokyo opens, they can then get down to the real business.
If there’s no news out and the market starts moving sharply at 5.30 pm NY time then you can be fairly sure that some big players are either trying to trigger big stop-loss orders or are trying to get the market to more favourable levels before Tokyo opens.
