in the late 90's you had profesionals in accounting,lawyers, computer technicians etc quitting their good jobs to daytrade. people are not quitting their dayjobs to trade full time. if you quit your good job or fired ,laid off,,you can't find another job in this 10% unemployment situation. now the unemployed don't have money to trade or invest. volume shrinks. also bear stearns and lehman bros, and now goldman sachs are not in the market anymore. shut down their prop trading division. the only injection of new money into the equity markets is fed injection of cash via buying treasuries qauntitative easing. market is up on all the wrong reasons not because of growth forecast. All the HFT machines are 'daytraders' 'intraday trading isn't much different from swingtraders or position traders...daytrading is less risky than position trading,.in illiquid securities. The reason guys with portfolios of more than $1 million don't daytrade is because their account size is too big to daytrade.
While the Fed tries to incite inflation through all their usual trickery, their policies are really draining the populus dry. What effect do you think ZIRP is having on people trying to get by on their savings when they can earn next to no interest, while stocks zig zag sideways for years at a time. Meanwhile, costs for many things continue to climb, no matter the supply/demand for those items.
look at SCHW chart. retail traders have given up and left. retail investors have pulled money from mutual funds. golden goose is dead.
retail investors would have been better off financially if they have bought bonds t-bills with 5% yield for 10 years than stocks like nasdaq why would any retail investor want to own google.apple, or micrsoft? these market ETF like spy QQQ DIA and ETF are just selling instruments by banks to funnel cash into these stocks. and get management fees for doing nothing. imo, equity markets are overowned. there is very little cash on the sidelines. china is dumping t-bills with USD losing it's value and 1% interest rates. and low yields.
Take a look at the volume on the weekly charts and rethink your position that volume is "going down big." If you will notice, volume tends to remain fairly steady during fairly steady market movements. When the markets get choppy is when you start seeing volume spikes. My thoughts on the matter is that sharp fluctuations cause retail investors to chase the markets, buying and selling more often than when the market is in a smooth trend, which is when most are comfortable buying and holding an issue. Volume spikes more often than not when there is a sell-off. Volume is not decreasing, but is stabilizing.
wow! what is this guy's educational background? is he just a computer programmer? did he make this for a wall street firm? and what do you mean by "HFT"? the algos 10 years ago were very honorable and noble compared to the robber baron HFT's of today.
seasons change and so do markets....there are plenty of other non US markets to trade. The DOW isnt the only market or the US in general. Plenty of money being made world wide!
There doesn't seem to be much trouble getting fill for 1 million shares of SPY if you're willing to pay just few more cents extra... not to talk about hitting the options. Perhaps you meant to write 'billion'.