here's a chart. note the heavy increase in volume towards the end of the day. you see this kind of sharp volume increase all the time. normally during the day, you expect such an increase to come with long candles. however, at the end of the day, often these fat volume candles are not likewise elongated. what is the meaning of this?
Intraday longs and shorts being exited as the trading day concludes? The dubious value of volume analysis? Just guessing.
here is a photo of order flow demand at the end of the day used to be the specialist at the NYSE who would make everyone happy ... now its this gentleman http://newyork.grubstreet.com/13_goodhumor_lg.jpg
VSA principles shed some light on the equation, however, to really see what is / are driving these abnormally high volume figures, we have to include in the discussion the HRT shops, hedge funds with capital sufficient to sponsor those expensive and worthless so-called black box systems what normally happens and can be seen on the floor, but increasingly only on a monitor, as so many of these exchanges have changed over to being ECN's what normally happens is what is called position clearing. it is increasingly difficult to openly discuss or post on these threads because those that do these method pay more than the usual attention here, than innocent traders do, and as such, improve and hide in increasingly nefarious ways as a result of having been exposed, here goes: massive short positions not desirous of being held are eventually squared in the last 20mins for equities, hence the notice of order imbalances as the wave of orders, derivatives and such continues to peter out, into the options, futures contracts, etf's and other hedge vehicles, they too have to square their positions before cob (close of business), if not desirous of holding overnight... as these respective derivatives get hit, then they too sweep their respective books in the opposite direction of the original order.... one series of orders has a magnifier effect upon the markets, it just depends upon which you're looking at. I believe someone posted an ES chart, they are presently 5:1 of the full contract the full S&P500 contract represents, as its name signifies, 500 composite stocks, which represents a basket. that basket has been simplified into ETF's that also act in a similar fashion, like full sized contracts, in that moving 100 shares or 100,000 shares of an ETF means moving the associated representative underlying shares too... artificial and duplicative volume movement, no question does it cancel itself out?, only on an exchange level, not on an account or position level. can you trade these patterns that are random and without precursor to indicate they're "coming"?, not really, but you certainly can observe them...
I'm still a fairly new trader (less than 2 years experience), but here's my take on it: Every trading book/reference I've read concludes that the "amateurs play the open and professionals play the close". Every one of these books/references advises against trading the first 20-30 minutes. Watch the price action, they advise, and then trade your plan if entry is signaled. They also stand firm that the big money plays the closing 30-60 minutes based on a variety of factors such as relative strength, VWAP, selling into strength, buying into weakness, and so on. This makes sense if you think about it. Late today, for example, it was clear that the 1111 zone in ES was going to hold as strong resistance and so at least a minor pullback would be expected when price was unable to break the 52-week high. On days when we trend down most of the day, once support is established (as ES established support around 1085 yesterday), buyers step in because they have a "floor" that adds color to the big picture. I'm not sure how much influence day traders' closing out their positions has, except in the case of stocks with lower average daily volume.
someone must have some more insight on this.. I can't be the only person asking this question. look at huge volume at the very end on HGSI
Don't want to mislead you, but I thought it was VWAP pricing. VWAP is calculated throughout the day and then the counterparties execute at EOD, reflecting the volume? It's like a manager wants to move 100,000 shares without giving away their 'hand' to the market, other party says "okay, I'll take it from you at VWAP" which they calc during the day and move the shares at EOD? Just guessing.
That's what I would think as well. Nothing mysterious about it. When you have equal buyers and sellers no matter the size it won't move price. Long candles happen when one side greatly outweighs the other and has to move price in order to get filled.