Home sales move in 1000's and 10's of 1000's and 100 of 1000's. Not tick by tick microsecond by microsecond. Difference. Completely.
That's why volume is damn near useless unless it's helping to identifying buying and selling climaxes.
Yes... selling climaxes are for sure on my radar, but this one little 5 sec bar just didn't seem like it to me. This is good stuff, and backs up well what Maverick was saying so thank-you. The question is how does this actually get facilitated between two parties? wrbtrader I see addressed this a bit in his post, but it still surprises me that they can co-ordinate like this to get such huge volume done in so little time without price moving much. I fully agree and maybe I wasn't specific enough when I first posted. I wanted to know why huge volume didn't affect price. Clearly it can only be an institutional trader, but it doesn't matter to me about who is. All I was interested in was, as you say, why wasn't the supply/demand balance affected. If there wasn't someone willing to buy at that very price, and if someone dumped 600 contracts at the market, then price should have very well dropped a few points until it was all absorbed. I don't watch the DOM at all, but I assume that if during the slow time, each level had 25 contracts, it would take 100 contracts to clear a point... so to absorb 600 contracts should have meant going through a few levels.
There's some really good stuff in your post wrbtrader... so thank-you. So it looks like the answer to my question really comes down to who cares how slow the market was at the time, and who cares what the DOM may be showing (although I don't know what was available at each price level at the time), what is happening here is doing a deal where a buyer and seller were matched up for fairly significant volume to do the deal without moving price to much. I would assume that if this was just a market order to dump 600 contracts all at once, price would have to drop, but since this was all absorbed quite nicely, then its a matter of stuff being pre-arranged, or simply contracts were made available at a specific price and if someone wanted them, they could have them, and if no one wanted them, the deal wouldn't be done, since putting it on the market in an at market order would have caused price to drop. So really, to me as a retail trader, this doesn't much matter since it didn't really move the price and was perhaps a trade used for some purpose other than showing the demand/supply side of the market.
Totally... but then its a matter of how to hunt for these levels. I didn't study this area too much to be honest, and it wasn't on my radar, and it even broke about 30 mins later if I recall correctly, so this may just be an inside trade so to speak as others are suggesting. But yes, I am on the lookout for levels that the big money will defend, and S&R is the basis of what I see and do.
Careful though... even in this thread alone, there is already some hostility. I've taken quite a bit of it in the past couple of years I've been here. Most don't post anything, they just read all they can, hoping to pick up something good. But anytime someone tries to post something good or have a discussion, it turns ugly quick. Most don't have a clue, and they are the loudest voice. Those who know, barely talk, and its more of a whisper that is drowned out by all the noise.
I do agree, and I don't really use volume at all for my analysis which is mostly levels and swing points and seeing if they break or not. But just the fact that so many contracts could be traded without moving price was a surprise.
One trader's meaningless price is another trader's "level" - bottom right hand corner. But in my case never on a absurd 5 tick chart but yes on a 5 min (or greater) chart.
Yes... agreed. The question of course is where you got the 4554 level from (i'm not in front of my charts to look for myself). You got many levels on your chart, but if they are all carefully thought out, and you see what you need to see to initiate a trade, then why not. Most think that I'm trading a 5 sec chart, but what I'm doing is looking to see what happens on the 5 sec chart when price reaches a level I'm watching, or even a previous important swing point. There is a huge difference I think.
Absorption. If a large trader wants to buy or sell they can soak up a lot of the market orders and price won't move.