The Thursday-Friday-Monday Pattern | Tom Hougaard

What happens when we start out trading on a Monday, and the previous Thursday’s high was higher than Friday’s high? Over the last 52 weeks, there were 21 instances where the price action on Friday was unable to trade above the highest point of the previous day, Thursday. I then looked at what happened on the following Monday. If there was a holiday on the Monday, I would view the price action on the Tuesday. Let me show you some examples:

When Thursday’s high was higher than Friday’s high, Monday traded below Friday's low.

 

Considering the random nature of the markets on a day by day basis, there shouldn’t be a pattern, and if there is, I have found an edge to exploit. I was surprised to find that on 20 out of the 21 occurrences, the Dow traded lower on Monday, often lower than Friday’s low. 

 

Here is how to apply this strategy:
1) Switch to the daily time frame.
2) Confirm that Friday's high is lower than Thursday's high.
3) Mark the low of the Friday candle.
4) Move to a smaller time frame for entry.
5) Wait for the price to reach a bearish fair value gap.
6.) Enter a short position, expecting the price to hit Friday's low on Monday.
7) On Monday, monitor the regular New York trading session.

I am not in the business of deluding people, so here is an example where it did not work: 

 

It did not work: Monday did not get below the lows of Friday.  

 

And here is one I traded earlier in August 2019. I went home short over the weekend –always a very risky strategy – and I was rewarded for it (this time!):

I assume you notice that there are often gaps associated with the Thursday-Friday-Monday pattern. Gaps are an inevitable part of trading life. 

Quoted from:
Tom Hougaard (2019)  - What I Wish Someone Had Told Me 20 Years Ago (p. 110 ff.). 

  

Examples of Tom Hougaard's Scenario Analysis:
If Monday so far is the highest traded point for the last 3 days, i.e. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 

then how often is Thursday going to trade below the low of Wednesday?
What happens to Monday if the previous Friday trades below the highs of Thursday?

Tom Hougaard: The Thursday, Friday, and Monday Scenario, June 14, 2021.

 

See also:

Tom Hougaard's YouTube channel.  

Darya Filipenka (April 3, 2024)  - ICT Fair Value Gap.

Darya Filipenka (March 18, 2024)  - ICT Draw on Liquidity.

Cameron Benson (August 20, 2023)  - Three-Push Reversal Patterns. 

orderbloque (March 1, 2025)  - Market Logic Based on Liquidity, Volume, and Inefficiency.

Tom Hougaard (2022) - Best Loser Wins: Why Normal Thinking Never Wins the Trading Game.

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But is that actually true: does Tom Hougaard's Thursday-Friday-Monday Pattern really has an edge? Here are the results of the respective 2003-2025 backtests for the S&P 500, Nasdaq, Dow Jones, and Russell 2000:

 

S&P 500: 472 setups; 231 wins: 48.94% win rate: No edge.                            
Nasdaq: 449 setups; 249 wins: 55.46% win rate: Slight positive edge.              
DJIA: 458 setups; 223 wins: 48.69% win rate: No edge.                            
Russell 2000: 464 setups; 258 wins: 55.60% win rate: Slight positive edge.

 

 

                             

 

 

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Addendum, February 27, 2026:

 

 DJIA (cash): » When Thursday’s high was higher than Friday’s high, the following

Monday traded below Friday's low. « January 1, 2025 into February 27, 2026. True: 44.00%

 DJIA (futures): » When Thursday’s high was higher than Friday’s high, the following

Monday traded below Friday's low. « January 1, 2025 into February 27, 2026. True: 46.70%

DJIA (futures): » When Thursday was the High of the Week, and Thursday’s high

 was higher than Friday’s high, the following Monday traded below Friday's low. «
January 1, 2025 into February 27, 2026. True: 54.50%

 

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In this video of May 18, 2026, Tom Hougaard updates his research on the "Thursday, Friday, Monday" trading pattern, a strategy he originally developed in 2018. The core mechanics of the pattern are relatively straightforward. It triggers when the market's Friday price action fails to break above the high of the previous Thursday. Historically, this specific setup signaled a high probability that the market would retest or trade below Friday's low on the following Monday. 

 

However, Tom’s recent deep dive reveals that the market has evolved. While his early research—based on a limited two-year sample—boasted an incredible 96% success rate (24 out of 25 trades), his analysis of data from 2024 and 2025 shows a much lower hit rate of approximately 62%.

Despite this statistical shift, the data highlights a unique characteristic: following this setup, there is a 40% frequency of "trend days," meaning the market opens and closes at opposite extremes of its daily range. Additionally, Tom notes a slight caveat for long weekends: when Monday is a market holiday, the pattern's objective is typically met on Tuesday instead.

Ultimately, Tom emphasizes that this setup is a market pattern rather than an infallible entry technique. He openly shares his frustration that market behavior has seemingly "normalized" or shifted since his initial discovery, rendering the strategy less reliable than it used to be. He concludes by stressing that long-term trading success relies less on blindly following this specific pattern, and more on a trader's ability to identify and capitalize on broader trend days.

Trading Tips from the Front Office | Tom Hougaard

In 2007 I visited the oil pit in New York. I got some rather unusual trading advice from a 20-year veteran of the pits. The floor traders seem to have a unique take on the market, probably because they are so close to the forces of demand and supply unleashed in the pit. Here is what the trader told me:

 

1. The First Cut Is The Cheapest

‘The first cut is usually the cheapest. I see so many of the new traders who are unable to take a loss. They hold on to their position for too long. They don’t understand that I too am wrong more times that I am right, but I cut the trade the moment I am in doubt. That first cut has kept me alive in the pit for 20 years.’

 

15 Minute Bar Chart of Crude Oil with red Simple Moving Average of 60 bars:
Price goes where the Other Time Frame Traders have their Stop (Loss) or Limit (Buy or Sell) Orders: 

Around Highs and Lows of previous 1 Hour and 4 Hour Bars, Sessions, 

Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters, Years, 3 Years.
Look for Peak Formations a.k.a. Reversal Patterns around these Levels 

(QM Patterns, V-, M-, W Formations).
Dotted blue horizontals = Yesterday's High and Low
Blue solid horizontals = Last Week's High and Low
Red Solid Horizontal = Last Months High and Low.
See also HERE

2. The Market is Efficient

He also told me about the nature of the market: ‘The market is efficient. It wants to go where the orders are. These orders can be stop (loss) orders or limit (buy or sell) orders.’ I asked him to elaborate and he said: ‘often the market will go to a certain price just to make sure as many people are filled as possible, and then it reverses. We say in the pit that they push them up to take them down.’

3. Trend Days Are The Best

I asked him about intraday trends. He told me he had the advantage of being able to see the orders from the brokers. His best days were ‘trend days’, where the market continues in one direction all day. This point was aired by others I met in the pit. If a good trend was developing intraday, these guys would press it for all it was worth, irrespective of who was on the other side of the trade. They were never concerned about whether the market technicals were overbought or oversold. The only thing they had in mind was to press it as high or as low as they could before the bell rang.

Quoted from:
Tom Hougaard (2011) - Trading at the Top: Trading Tips and Strategies from a Professional Trader.

See also:

Tom Hougaard (2011) - The Lost Momentum Trend Following Strategy.

Tom Hougaard - YouTube Channel.

The Lost Momentum Trend Following Strategy | Tom Hougaard

A dear child has many names. The strategy below is called ‘lost momentum’ in my vocabulary, but it no doubt has other names too. It is in essence a form of trend-following strategy.

 

Ingredient No. 1: Define the Trend

I recommend using a simple or exponential moving average (MA) of more than 50 bars. Some have reported good results with the 62 period MA. I don’t want you to get too bogged down with rigid definitions. You are looking for a trending market, which trades above your chosen MA, and the MA is pointing up (for long positions – reverse the instructions below for short positions).

Ingredient No. 2: Define your Time Frame

You can use this technique on any time frame. I find it lends itself very well to day trading on the 15-minute chart, and swing trading on the four-hour chart.

Set-Up for 'Buy Signal'

Your chosen market is trading above your MA indicator and the MA is pointing up. If you observe that the market is taking out a previous low (that previous low must be at least 8 bars prior to the current bar), you now wait until the market closes back above the price point of the previous low. That is your buy signal.

 

[...] The technique stems from the observation that even in a trending market you will often find that price dips below a previous low, only to immediately resume its trend higher. All I attempt to do is to trade in the direction of the trend defined by the moving average. I reverse the instruction above for selling. 

 

[...] In the morning, around 8 am, I look at what the high over the overnight range is. I then wait for the market to take out either the high or the low of the range. If, and only if, the market then trades back into the range, after having taking out the high or the low of the range, I prepare an order to enter the market at the 62 per cent retracement over the range. This order comes complete with a stop and a target too. It doesn’t trigger every day though.

Quoted from:
Tom Hougaard (2011) - Trading at the Top: Trading Tips and Strategies from a Professional Trader.

 

 See also:
Tom Hougaard (2011) - Trading Tips from the Front Office.

W.D. Gann's Daily Bread & Butter Trading Strategy | Tom Hougaard

I want to tell you about a world famous trader named W. D. Gann. He wrote many courses on trading, some of which were exceptionally esoteric in content. Gann was supposedly a very clever man, so it came as no surprise to me that the man who made his millions selling forecasts to people actually made his money from a remarkably simple trading method.

 

Keep things as simple as possible.

 
My friend and trading partner David Paul once spent a whole summer at the British Library, researching past wheat and beans prices, and tracking Gann’s trades to get to the nitty gritty of his actual trading strategy. His conclusion was startling. He told me that ‘Gann simply traded double tops and lows in the direction of the daily trend, nothing more, nothing less’. After eight weeks in the archives of the library he was adamant that what Gann wrote in his courses and what he traded were two very different things. Maybe the lesson for all of us is to keep things as simple as possible.

Quoted from:
Tom Hougaard (2011) - Trading at the Top: Trading Tips and Strategies from a Professional Trader.