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Old 03-07-2007, 12:57 PM
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Re: Average Volume Question

Here comes the devil's advocate...

Why the concern with how much volume is being traded today vs. yesterday vs. last Monday vs. last month vs. last year, etc?

Don't get me wrong, I watch the daily volume simply to ensure that the markets I am trading are liquid enough for my trading, but rarely do I see a dropoff in volume that causes concern simply b/c of liquidity.

Now, with that being said, I trade on volume/share bar charts. Please don't misinterrupt my question of the comparison of volumes over different timeframes. I want to see volume each day and want to see it during the morning session, hence the reason for the volume charts; however, I really don't care if today's volume is more or less than the previous day (or any other timeframe) when trading on an intra-day basis only. When you are trying to take little moves throughout the day, the important thing is to capitalize on those moves.

The reason I mention this is that you can find days where strong volume equated to big moves and days where strong volume resulted in choppy or weak conditions. And of course, the end of day volume is great to know in hindsight, but as you trade during the day, you have no idea what to expect in terms of volume.

My opinion Soul is to not be concerned with the day-to-day volume changes. We know volume fluctuates daily and we know that high volume days can be followed up with higher volume days and/or lower volume days. You don't know till the end of the day. I think the real concern is being able to capitalize during the day when there is a good flow of volume in the market. For me, that resulted in volume/share bar charts visually depicting when there is volume in the markets.

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