Here is what happened 14th/15th.
Eight tests run to find out if certain times are favoured and cross-checked between the two dates.
43 dividends indicated by dividenddata. I don't think any were rejected because they were none-sterling. But short of counting them on the site I cannot be sure. I had expanded the program to take up to 50 items.
The number of shares with price drops greater than the dividend (targets) ranged from 13 (30%) to 23 (53%).
The available number of targets did broadly follow the FTSE100 on the 15th with its dip at about 1 to 2 pm
The highest prices are early in the morning. This is of no interest for my study since ideally I am looking for the opposite.
The lowest prices are yet again around midday.
No recovery on target shares has been observed on the results of the previous week.
TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS
Not worth doing loads of test runs at different times on the day because of the minimal difference between times.
On any post ex-div date, there seem to be quite a number of targets. Consider just these. The only reason for trapping the pre ex-div data is in order to establish how many shares the allocated fund will buy.
Once again midday seems to be the best time in which to purchase. As swill453 pointed out, it is difficult to believe because one would think that the automated systems would have noted the fact. Although I still mark the conclusions as 'tentative', with 12 tests over the two weeks and with all cross-checked times, it is amazingly consistent. Looks like the automated systems are playing a different game. For example, if they were shorting shares, they would want the prices to be as high as possible.
Here are the two images of the run:-
https://imgur.com/a/5JldGThanks again to Itsallaguess for the link. It is very easy to use and I'll find out how well it works when I post this. Incidentally I couldn't see a way of editing a post otherwise I would change the link to that previous one. Presumably the "Sexy Women In Newcastle-under-Lyme" becomes the "Sexy Women In WhereverYouAre"? Otherwise, I had no idea we were the national centre for certain things! Sheltered life I guess!
Regards,
ep