ask volume vs. bid volume - does it matter?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by IronFist, Aug 20, 2009.

  1. Bakinec

    Bakinec

    It seems that you're asking about PRESENT volume, not traded volume.

    I'm a newb myself, but it seems to me that if one were to take such an indicator, it would be prone to A LOT of noise as there are hidden, iceberg, etc orders... and just plain old FAKE present volume that disappears. I lsot count of the number of times when I was trading prop there was huge volume on the ask level, only to disappear a second later. It's illegal but I haven't ever heard or read of anyone being caught at it and fined.
     
    #11     Aug 21, 2009
  2. Hi Shikantaza...

    True about CDV working as a good indicator for Ask/Bid Volume pressure divergences or that TT patented the indicator?
     
    #12     Aug 21, 2009
  3. Yes.
     
    #13     Aug 21, 2009
  4. Maybe... :D
     
    #14     Aug 21, 2009
  5. Exactly. Interesting, if true.

    By the way: When is the next grab?
     
    #15     Aug 21, 2009
  6. This thread was asking about traded volume.

    The bid volume vs. ask volume indicator that shows how much of a given bar's volume was hit at the bid and how much was hit at the ask.

    Just so there is no confusion I am attaching a screenshot. Please see volume in the bottom study and bid volume vs. ask volume in the middle study (the yellow line represents the difference between bid/ask volume).

    So like, looking at the volume spike at 8:52 on the chart, you will see that total volume is 9265, and if you look at bid vs. ask volume, you will see that 5869 of that volume was at the bid and 3396 of that volume was at the ask.

    So does knowing the specific ask vs. bid numbers help at all? That's the purpose of this thread.



    DISCLAIMER:

    Since I like my threads on ET to be serious, let's not have any mystical trading guru fortune cookie bullshit. So none of the following, please:

    - "It works if you understand it. I guess you don't understand it"

    - Sending PMs saying you'll explain how it works in exchange for payment

    - Saying it provides information useful for profitable trading without giving quantified examples (for example, showing some cherry-picked charts where you had some volume delta divergence that would've been a profitable trade, but failing to mark the other 8 times it appeared on the same chart where it would not have been a profitable trade)

    - Saying you make 3x daily range

    - Posting pics of custom indicators that have nothing to do with the thread

    - Writing excessively long posts that at first glance may give off the impression, especially to noobs, that you are an expert and qualitative and quantifiable analysis and have fully mastered trading and refined it to a science due to your extensive usage of $5 words and freeform conceptual charts expertly drawn in MSPaint illustrating some abstract concept that may remotely be related to trading yet provides no actual value to anyone other than noobs who get suckered into the length of your posts and then spend 6 months trying to learn your system that isn't even profitable in the first place as evidenced by the facts that a) backtesting fails miserably and b) you cannot even trade it yourself yet somehow you view yourself as a trading expert.


    Actually, I don't even care. I have half of ET on ignore anyway :p
     
    #16     Aug 21, 2009
  7. Obviously you give too much credit to the other half.
     
    #17     Aug 21, 2009
  8. sosueme

    sosueme

    Irofist

    what are you trying to trade. stocks, e minis?
     
    #18     Aug 21, 2009
  9. I'm going to venture that the ultimate grab alert zone of short inventory is at 1573-1577. A divergence there would mark the ultimate short entry spot to accumulate a full clip.

    I doubt I'll have any money left to add positions there, the way things are going. Thank Krishna I only trade SIM.
     
    #19     Aug 21, 2009
  10. maxpi

    maxpi

    I just spent a few days coding up an indicator to tell me what size trades were going off at bid or ask... it's just not that useful much of the time.. the thinner the market the more useful it seems to be...

    really large orders can be broken up into smaller orders and traded so as to not affect the price... the assumption was that the larger orders are the smart money and the smaller orders are dumb money but that may have gone by the wayside.. in fact the larger orders could be the dumb money and often, it appears that is the case... I see large orders buying the tops and selling the bottoms all the time... hee hee, maybe people follow the dumb money more than the smart... "hey, what's his face just sold the heck out of the contract and price didn't move, hit the panic buy button"...

    I'm always looking for specific conditions where volume by order size and at the bid or ask is useful but I'm not coming up with a whole lot... overall volume in a bar surely has it's use... and even that is subject to market conditions, sometimes it tells you one thing, other times another and sometimes nothing much at all...

    Like I always say, if trading was easy everybody would be doing it and making a fortune...

    I've seen indicators that claim to sort out smart money from dumb money but I doubt they are consistently usefull.....
     
    #20     Aug 21, 2009