What causes the volume spikes you see sometimes on the 1 minute chart? It's quiet & boring & stuck in a range, then all of a sudden volume jumps from 500 to over 2000. Anyone know who causes this or why it happens this way? I thought the big guys liked to disguise their buying, and I sure don't think the public is causing the volume spike. Pacific Time:
My volume shows as 1631 at 10:49PT, whereas yours shows about 2200. Maybe more traded in your time zone than in mine. Price was testing resistunce. Or perhaps it was resisting testance. 748 of it occurred during the second 10:49:46 on brief breakance of the resisting testiness. A fair assumption might be that half the voluminance was uppance and the other half downance during that one second spike. Which splains a lot. As I write at 11:33 PT, the supposed resistunce was broken again on much lower volume, 408 contracts, so maybe it will now roll over on its belly and become supportunce. One penetration per side usually suffices to make that price level happy. It is all follow-through to the non-event which happunt at 9:42, signalling that the morning farce was over, so subtile in its subtility that you can barely see it in the chart.
Then at 11:50 Mr. Price obliged the rolled-over Miss Support with a somewhat more than peremptory and perfunctory pecker poke. Three minutes later we see that she likes it, because she hasn't let him pull it out. This happened on significantly less volume than the event you noted, clearly indicating that the resistance of the support was not as great as the support of the resistance.
The event I noticed at 9:42 was price closing back above both moving averages on my chart, which finished setting the trap for anyone who went short when price dropped below both ma's a few minutes earlier. So as far as the large spike in volume does it come from stop orders getting triggered above the resistance? (are there really that many that build up). Does it come from some big trader that places an order? Is it a hedge fund, market maker, somebody else?
I was expecting that pecker poke to occur & continue on down. Seen this exact type of day before. It was hard to catch the beginning of it though as I didn't really see a signal/setup. I almost got in at the beginning, but talked myself into being more patient. Anyway I got some of it later on, but patience didn't really pay off this time.
Ok...........I came up with my own theory. The market makers know that there are stops above 2206, so they accumulate knowing that's where they're going to take it. When they get all they want they buy just enough more to goose the market up. Others jump on board a little late, stops get hit, market maker sells to all the buyers, and this all happens pretty much instantaneously, therefore a volume spike. I feel better now. Thanks.