Price & Market BehaviorCore researchlive in production

Gap Play

Updated dailyData needs: lowlong onlyshort onlylong short

In plain terms

Two trades: ride a gap UP through a consolidation (continuation), or buy the bounce after a heavy gap DOWN into an oversold tape.

How it works

Two well-documented overnight-gap edges. GAP-AND-GO (continuation): a large overnight gap UP on confirming volume extends intraday and over the next few sessions — strongest when the gap follows a 20-day-high consolidation breakout. GAP FADE (mean reversion): a large gap DOWN on heavy volume into an oversold tape (close < 20d MA, low RSI) tends to fill within 3-5 sessions; we long the bounce, not short the gap-down. Pure-price family, only needs OHLC.

Live results

323 times picked on its own · 611 times inside a blend (523 beat the stock) · updated 2026-06-06

This strategy is a frequent ingredient in blends that combine a few strategies on one stock. It has contributed to 611 such blended picks (523 of which beat simply holding the stock). Picking it on its own is only one of the ways it shows up.

How its picks scored vs. buy & hold

Each pick is graded on a recent year it was never tuned on, against simply owning the same stock

Where its edge concentrates

Share of picks in each company-size group that beat buy & hold

How often it trades

Active vs. patient. Bars on the left mean it waits for rare setups; bars on the right mean it trades often

Return vs. buy & hold

How much each pick beat or trailed simply owning the stock over the test year (extreme microcap moves trimmed)

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Data dependencies

Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.

Expected edge

Caton-Donaldson (1997) and follow-ups show ~0.5-1% 5-day continuation on volume-confirmed gap-ups; gap-downs reverse ~60% of the time within a week.

Explore Gap Play on alphactor.ai

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