Purpose -The purpose of this study is to examine what the optimal time is in a typical trading day for investors to buy/sell stocks in the Australian stock market. Design/methodology/approach -The study mainly focuses on the S&P/ASX200. Each trading day, between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm, is divided into 30-minute blocks. The effectiveness of easily implementable trading strategy to purchase the index in the morning and sell at the close is tested. The study controls for the excess overnight price

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... latility to improve the effectiveness of the investment strategy. This trading strategy is compared against other sixty-six possible daytrading combinations. Findings -The results show that the trading strategy of buying in the first 30 minutes of the trading session and close off the position during the last 30 minutes obtains higher returns than other sixty-six strategies. Practical implications -The day-trading strategy proposed in this study is very simple and therefore can be easily implemented by investors including individual investors. Originality/value -To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study which constructs a trading strategy using the J-or U-shaped intraday return pattern.