1. Remind yourself that traders only determine the short term price not the value.
2. Use the volume to help predict the right time to buy more assets or change into a better position.
Large volume (relatively speaking) means the price is at a peak or valley. You are either at the top or the bottom of the chart, you need to determine this.
What is Stock Volume?
In this lesson, we learned the importance of stock volume. Although volume won’t help intelligent investors learn the intrinsic value of a company, it can be used as a tool to help predict market behaviour.
Many times investors can be fooled into believing that the market price of a stock is determined by all the shareholders. This idea is false.
When we look at the volume of a company on an given day, we can quickly get a sense of how many traders are actually determining the price of a stock when we compare this number to the shares outstanding. This ratio, volume/shares outstanding, provides a good idea how many traders are moving away from the company and how many are coming into the company.
- When the company trades at a very low volume, we can generally say that the shareholder agree with the market price.
- Likewise, if the volume is very high, we can generally say that shareholders disagree with the market price.
We demonstrated this principal with Wells Fargo (WFC). When we looked at the historical market price for WFC, we learned that on the day where the volume was the highest in ten years, the market price was at an all time low. This idea of shareholders disagreeing with the market price when volume is relatively high is an important point that stock traders can use to their advantage.
Always remember, volume can mean that the stock is over priced or underpriced. The peak or valley is for you to discern.