Seemingly you can't differentiate between direction and volatility, the former is quite irrelevant for daytraders and the latter is crucial (for most). Volatility and volume generally go hand in hand. Volatility equals more opportunities, even when compensating by trading larger positions. Personally - 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 were the best years for trading but I doubt they'll come back anytime soon.
We need a black swan to spook the markets, otherwise we going to see more and more reduced volatility over the next 12 months. Until then batten down the hatches and preserve capital.
something is definitely cooking. in last few days volume shoot up on stocks and etf's like IWM,while markets are stuck in super narrow range. we are due for good one direction,big range day. which way(up or down)-i have no idea. it's was suspiciously quiet...while volume is rising
The GDP report comes out tomorrow. That could be the catalyst for a big range day. http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/economic-calendar/
but i also suspect that 'they' can once again f** things up. for example-gap up\down at open and same tight range as on previous days
bots arbing everything that moves, keeps it tight. unless you can confuse the bots, say, a walmart headline, and that only lasts 200 milliseconds. if you're not a bot, you're obsolete.
Not sure where you are getting this from but BOTH the daily AND weekly ATR of ES has gone down significantly from 2008-2011. Trading is mostly a waste of time now since range = profit potential for directional traders and 2012-2013 has very little of that, of course good non-directional strategies still work but those are very hard to come by, especially for retail traders.
judging by premarket volume and price levels even the GDP is non event now..US market is DEAD at the day of major economic report back in a day IWM would be trading anywhere from 4 to 10M shares BEFORE MARKET OPEN. now it's < 300K
Here is the intra day range of the Dow (regular trading hours), excludes overnight gaps, from 2002 to yesterday. Each year is about 260 data points. There is a period from mid 2003 to mid 2007 where intraday moves were lower than what we have seen this year. We have all been spoilt by the wild action from 2008 onwards. A couple of 1000 moves can be seen (one is the flash crash).
They abolished the Uptick rule in 2007. If it was still in place i think the stock markets would have even lower volaility this year.