Why do futures rise overnight? Price patterns, news and crowd attention

Index futures have tended to rise overnight, between the evening and the next morning. This study tested 19 possible reasons: price patterns, scheduled news and crowd attention (measured by Wikipedia page views). Only the night before a Federal Reserve rate decision passed, and those nights were already known from an earlier study, so this is not new evidence. Crowd attention failed.

Mostly refuted: The main ideas failed; one side result is being tested on new data. How to read a study.

Verdict, as the study states it: Of 19 arms across three layers, exactly one passes every frozen test: the pre-FOMC night on NQ (N1 — VALIDATED). B1 attention-induced buying: refuted.

Study number

FPR-26-13

Versions tested

57

Pre-registration written

Sep 16, 2026, 06:37 ET

First result

Sep 16, 2026, 06:38 ET

Markets

NQ primary; ES and GC secondary

Backs

Crowd attention as a signal; The pre-FOMC night on NQ

Sample

Nights 2016-01-05 to 2026-09-11 (NQ 2,581 nights); train 2016-2021 / confirm 2022-2026. The pre-FOMC arm's 53 nights are 2020-2026 only, because the event archive's FOMC rows start in 2020

Costs

Round turn NQ $14, ES $29, GC $24; fills at the 16:00 and 09:30 prints

Notes and defects

Arms = 19 per root x 3 roots (15 hypotheses Bonferroni-counted on NQ, p < 0.0033). Attention (B1): the narrower attention-arm prereg (created 05:53:05, about 45 min before the run) and B1 here were both written before results; B1 = +$281.58/night, t 1.57, p 0.117, refuted. CAUTION on the placebo: with attention dates shuffled, the same arm returns +$100.11 (t 0.70), about the $98.00 baseline. Shuffling therefore removes the effect, it does not reproduce it; both write-ups describe this backwards. The refutation stands on p = 0.117 and random-night placebo p = 0.188. Pre-FOMC (N1): partial. The prereg itself quotes the answer (+$973 net, n=53, t=3.12) from the event-nights run hours earlier, and N1 re-measures those same 53 nights, which lie inside the 2016-2026 window where the effect was first found (macro-events-fundamentals). It is a re-measurement, not an independent confirmation. 'On a longer sample' in the results is not true for this arm. Timestamp defect: the prereg says 'Frozen 2026-09-16 09:45 ET', but the file was created 06:37:45 and the results 06:38:58.

Data needed to rerun: CME futures 1-minute OHLCV bars (Databento GLBX layout: ts_event,rtype,publisher_id,instrument_id,open,high,low,close,volume,symbol) at <data-root>/fp-data/glbx/<ROOT>/1m/<YEAR>.csv; licensed vendor data, not redistributed (NQ, ES, GC 2016-2026); VIX daily <data-root>/fp-data/fmp/vix-daily.json (FMP); the fp-context event archive (<data-root>/fp-context: events/**/*.jsonl with ts_event/ts_published/subclass/region, events/earnings/_weights.json, features/context_daily.jsonl); built from FMP, Fed, BLS/BEA, Federal Register, GDELT, Alpaca and SEC EDGAR feeds; not redistributed and its builder is not included; Wikipedia pageview attention series (fp-context attention/wikipedia, public API)

Original working title: The overnight drift under three layers (technical, event, behavioural), including the attention arm B1 and the pre-FOMC arm N1

Files

Hashes for every file are in SHA256SUMS. Market data is not included.

Cite this study

Futures Playbook Research (2026). Why do futures rise overnight? Price patterns, news and crowd attention. Study FPR-26-13. https://www.futuresplaybook.com/research/overnight-three-layer

These results are based on simulated or hypothetical performance results that have certain inherent limitations. Unlike the results shown in an actual performance record, these results do not represent actual trading. Also, because these trades have not actually been executed, these results may have under- or over-compensated for the impact, if any, of certain market factors, such as lack of liquidity. Simulated or hypothetical trading programs in general are also subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to these being shown.