Red to Green Move: 3,661 SPY Gap-Down Opens, Counted

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · Published 2026-09-26

A red to green move starts with a stock opening below yesterday’s close and ends with it trading above that close. The name comes from the color most platforms give the day’s change: red while price is under the prior close, green once it is over. This page pins the move down, walks through one on SPY’s 5-minute chart, and counts every case on SPY since 1993 and on 30 large US stocks since 2000.

How it forms

The session opens lower. Overnight news, a weak futures market or a dividend coming off the price puts the first trade under the prior close. On the day’s change column the stock is red from the first print.

Buyers take it back through the prior close. The level matters to traders because it is the last price everyone agreed on, and because every platform shows the day’s change against it. The reasoning traders give is that a gap down traps the sellers who sold at the open, and a push through the prior close forces some of them to buy back. That is the story behind the setup, not something measured here.

The cross is the event, not the close. A stock can go red to green at 9:40 and be red again by noon. The definition counts the cross; what came after it is a separate question, and it is the question the numbers below answer.

It is the mirror of a different setup. Opening above the prior close and then trading below it is green to red. And a gap down that trades all the way back up to the prior close has also done what the gap fill page calls a fill, which is why the two ideas share a level.

The rule counted here

A gap down. The official open is below the official prior close, by any amount. On SPY that was 3,661 of 8,471 sessions, 43.2%, from 1 February 1993 to 25 September 2026.

A red to green move. A gap down whose session high is above the prior close. Daily bars are enough to see that the cross happened, because the open was below the line and the high was above it. They cannot say when it happened, so the hourly and 5-minute bars answer that part.

Outcomes. Whether the official close finished above the prior close, whether it finished above the open, and whether the next session closed higher. Prices are split-adjusted and not dividend-adjusted, so on the days SPY goes ex-dividend, part of the gap down is the dividend itself. Those days were not removed.

A worked example

Wednesday 26 August 2026, SPY on 5-minute bars. The prior close was $765.91. SPY opened at $764.73, $1.18 lower, a gap down of 0.15%. The first bar reached $765.80, 11 cents short of the line.

The 9:40 bar crossed it. Its high was $766.61, 70 cents above the prior close, so SPY went red to green ten minutes into the session. By the 9:50 bar price was back under the line, at $765.64.

The rest of the day went both ways. SPY fell to a low of $763.93 in the 12:40 bar, crossed again in the afternoon, and set its high of $767.35 in the 3:00 bar. It closed at $766.08, 17 cents above the prior close. A trader who bought as price crossed the line at $765.91 sat through a drop of $1.98 to $763.93 before the day finished green, and one who bought the 9:40 bar’s high of $766.61 sat through $2.68.

The original data

Two thirds of SPY’s gap downs crossed. Of the 3,661 gap-down opens, 2,446 traded above the prior close at some point, 66.8%. Every one is listed in the SPY red to green file, with its gap, high, close and next-day result.

Crossing did not settle the close. 1,230 of the 2,446, 50.3%, closed above the prior close. For comparison, 4,540 of all 8,471 sessions closed above the prior close, 53.6%. The cross did better against the open: 1,643 of the 2,446 closed above their open, 67.2%, while gap downs that never crossed closed above their open only 297 times in 1,215, 24.4%. Part of that gap is built into the definition, since a day that rallies far enough to cross has already moved up from the open.

The next session looked like any other. After a red to green day SPY closed higher the next session 1,310 times in 2,446, 53.6%. Across all sessions the rate was 4,539 in 8,470, also 53.6%. The two-sided binomial test gives p = 0.984: nothing there to separate from chance.

Large stocks showed the same shape. On 30 large US stocks (AAPL, MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL, META, NVDA, TSLA, JPM, BAC, WFC, XOM, CVX, KO, PEP, PG, JNJ, PFE, MRK, UNH, HD, WMT, COST, DIS, NFLX, INTC, CSCO, ORCL, IBM, BA and CAT), 87,745 of 194,149 stock-days since 2000 opened below the prior close, 45.2%. 60,022 of those crossed, 68.4%, and 30,090 of the crossers closed above the prior close, 50.1%. The list is today’s large companies, so it leaves out firms that shrank or disappeared.

Gap size decides most of it

Small gaps crossed almost every time. SPY gaps down of less than 0.25% crossed the prior close 1,411 times in 1,697, 83.1%. The rate fell as the gap grew: 592 of 915 from 0.25% to 0.5% (64.7%), 297 of 667 from 0.5% to 1% (44.5%), 115 of 299 from 1% to 2% (38.5%) and 31 of 83 at 2% or more (37.3%).

Big gaps that crossed held it less often. Among the crossers, the share closing above the prior close went from 52.4% for the smallest gaps to 49.0%, 47.1%, 42.6% and 38.7% for the largest. On the large stocks, gaps down of 2% or more crossed 1,584 times in 5,671, 27.9%.

The rate has drifted down. The crossing rate on SPY was 69.5% from 1993 to 2009, 65.1% from 2010 to 2019 and 63.0% from 2020 to 25 September 2026.

What the hour of the cross showed

Most crosses came early. SPY’s 1-hour bars cover 723 full sessions from 27 October 2023 to 25 September 2026, with seven half days dropped. 289 of them opened below the prior close and 171 crossed, 59.2%. The first cross came in the 9:30 bar 112 times, then 24, 13, 5, 5, 7 and 5 times in the six later bars. The hourly bars and the daily bar disagreed on whether a cross happened on 4 sessions.

Price usually went back under the line. On 139 of the 171, 81.3%, a later hourly bar traded below the prior close again. 97 of the 171, 56.7%, closed above it.

Later crosses closed green more often, on a small sample. Crosses in the first hour closed above the prior close 58 times in 112 (51.8%); later crosses 39 times in 59 (66.1%). The later group is small and covers under three years, so treat it as a lead, not a finding.

The 5-minute summer was thin. In SPY’s 60 sessions from 2 July to 25 September 2026, 25 opened below the prior close and only 6 crossed. All 6 traded back below it later, and only 26 August closed above it.

When it fails

Price crosses and comes straight back. On 24 September 2026 SPY opened at $764.07 against a prior close of $767.81, fell to $763.25, and crossed in the 12:15 bar at $768.40. The 12:20 bar traded back down to $766.60. The day’s high was $768.95 and the close $767.18, 63 cents below the prior close: red to green to red.

Big gaps rarely make it. Below a gap of about half a percent, a cross on SPY was the usual outcome. Above it, the cross happened on fewer than half of the days, and the ones that crossed closed green less often.

A dip after the cross is normal, not a warning. Four out of five hourly crosses traded back under the line, so a stop placed just below the prior close sits where price went most of the time.

The definition flatters the close-above-open figure. Comparing a red to green day with its own open compares a day chosen for rising with its own starting point. The fair comparison is the next session, and there the move added nothing.

Related

The opening gap page explains why the first print lands away from the prior close in the first place. Previous day high and low counts how often SPY takes out yesterday’s range, a wider version of the same level-watching. And the gap fill page covers the trip back to the prior close as its own trade, including why a fill rate needs a deadline.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.