A big gap to a new monthly high

Futures are on track to soar this morning, gapping up more than 2% and to a new monthly high. It's confounding a lot of folks, given the uncertain nature of the news that is supposedly triggering the gains.

It's been tough for the futures to hold gains when seeing this kind of overnight enthusiasm during tough markets. There have been a little more than a dozen times when they gapped up at least 1%, above the highest high of the past month, while still below the 200-day average.

Below, we can see every similar date since 1982 (there were no instances prior to 2001). Returns are shown from the opening price of the day with the gap up (i.e. today's open).

All but one of the dates saw the futures decline either 1 -3 days later and the sole exception showed a tiny gain that tended up being erased soon after. Most of them continued to show low reward up to a week or more later, though by a month afterward, there were only 3 losses.