dufferdon, On LSE stocks I can track transactions as "buys" or "sells". Sort of a T&S with cumulative totals. At the end of each day I have approximate figures for total buy volume and total sell volume. The info is available free at www.advfn.com under "trades". Unfortunately I have not found an equivalent for US stocks. spike
Duff, If a stock has been trading one to two million shares a day without much volatility or "news", and someone decides to buy six million shares by tomorrows close, the price is going to go UP. If you want something you will need to buy it at a premium (price goes up). If you don't want it you will need to sell it at a discount (price goes down). Human nature tends to overvalue what it doesn't have and undervalue what it does have. I don't mean to be distasteful but that's what I've observed in general. Market dynamics are based on general human nature.
Rigel, I agree with you. I was just trying to imply that even if price does go up on increasing volume it is not a certainty that it will continue to go up as the next day someone else may have a contrary opinion and decide to cash in on the previous day's rise. However it certainly tilts the odds in your favour. The odds can be tilted more by selecting an appropriate universe of stocks. For me those are ones that have high relative strength and have been advancing in waves. Because aggressive buying is more likely to attract the attention of the crowd in that type of stock than in those that are range-bound, unless, that is, the aggressive buying causes a breakout for those stocks. In answer to a previous question I have not seen any book that primarily focusses on volume. Granville and the Worden's have done a lot of work on using volume in analysis, but primarily in terms of developing volume-based technical indicators. I prefer to pay more attention to pure price volume behaviour as shown by the chart itself. As I am not familiar with the LSE concept of buy and sell volume I cannot comment on it.
you have a good point about the volume.. i went back and took a look at a longer time frame chart and it seems that the stock is retesting a trendline from its head and shoulder pattern on the weekly.. should the pattern hold, i would think that combined with the fact the stock showed weakness on thursdays rally and the volume increase that you pointed out, it might be a better short.. on the other hand, if the 200ma on the daily holds then we could see a retest of the trendline and possibly break it.. but for a swing, i would think its best to sit on the sideline and watch it to see which way it chooses.. for a scalp, i think it might provide a little hit if it breaks fridays close, but thats about it.. thanks for the input and dont forget to share a setup or two once you do your friday scans.. -qwik
Examples of set-ups that currently appeal to me are AV CSGS and OPMR. If and when I would actually enter them depends on their subsequent P,V behaviour and overall market condition. I will certainly be watching them very closely Monday if we have a strong market.
Jeffo.. its true that on the daily chart the trendline appears to be broken and it looks more like a retest.. but on the weekly if you draw the line based on open and closing prices then the stock was halted just at the neckline.. will be interesting to watch.. -qwik
i like that manu chart, should be interesting. thought I'd post this weekly chart of the qqq's and open it up for comments.
Interesting the only one that appeals to me out of those three is possibly CSGS. I believe this one may actually be a good short candidate. If this stock drops to 38.87 I think it would be an better short below at 38.49. I don't see anything special about the volume although volume does seem to be decreasing for the past five downtrending days.