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I've recently got my 13 year old son interested in learning about stock trading and options. He recently came to me with this question that I did not have an answer for. I am hoping someone in this forum can help.

He noticed that NVDA stock in Google finance showed a spike (up and immediately down) in after hours trading:

Google Finance after hours NVDA stock chart

but we could not find the same in other places for example marketwatch:

Marketwatch NVDA after hours stock chart

Another example: Walmart (WMT) stock today, Google finance shows a major dip after hours but Marketwatch shows no such thing.

Does anyone know why? Is this just a bug in Google stock charting software or something else?

TIA.

Flux
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CharmQuark
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2 Answers2

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Answer: something else (it's complicated!)

After-hours and pre-hours trading is not subject to any price barriers or halts, and is mostly unregulated accordingly. Trading errors/spikes are a significant trap for the unprepared, especially when there are corporate actions involved such a dividends, spinoffs, splits etc.

Different sources will include/exclude certain trade conditions and/or exchanges/trading venues. For regular market-hours trading, the rules are well-defined by the Consolidated Tape Association and the UTP Plan.

For after-hours and pre-hours trading, there are no rules regarding trades. Some sources will report all trades. Some sources will only report a subset of trades.

In the case of NVDA on trade date Jul 22 2021, there were no corporate actions involved (there was a 4:1 stock split a couple of days earlier, but this is unrelated).

Your attachment shows that NVDA closed at $195.94 but spike in after-hours trading above $205 according to one source and not to another.

Looking at high-cost instutional-level data feeds shows that NVDA had a single trade for $206.815 at 17:09:38 for 240 shares, performed through a dark pool.

The 15 most prior traders were from 17:08:45 through 17:09:10 at prices ranging from 195.65 thorugh 195.85 with volumes ranging from 1 share through to 128 shares from dark pools and NYSE Arca.

The 15 most subssequent traders were from 17:10:00 through 17:10:57 at prices ranging from 195.75 thorugh 195.85 with volumes ranging from 1 share through to 100 shares from dark pools and NYSE Arca.

The trade conditions present on the "spike" trade of 206.815 from a Dark Pool were: Form T (i.e. afterhours, which all the other trades had too), and "Average Price" which is meaningless on dark-pool-reported trades.

Did the trade occur? Yes. Was it cancelled? No. Is it generally indicative of the price of NVDA? No.

Draw your own conclusions from this example of after-hours trading. For what it's worth, published data from exchanges/consolidate tape do NOT incorporate any pre- or after-hourse trading into daily pricing (OHLC) data.

Richard at NorgateData
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This is a frequently asked question. More often than not, sharp spikes are due to bad data. For example:

Bad Data 1

Bad Data 2

Bad Data 3

and so on ...

Bob Baerker
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