Large volume in last 30 minutes

John_168

Hi All, I notice there are much larger volume occurred in some stocks in last 30 minutes regularly, but the price didn't change much. If the stock is manipulated by Smart Money, what are they trying to do? If there were huge price up or down with the large volume, that would make sense to me. But large volume with small price change, I'm lost. I attached VOXX 30min chart. You can see on every day, from 15:30pm to 16:00pm, there were large volumes, but price didn't change much. Does any body can explain why is this?

markd

Short term traders, especially day traders, like to be flat (no position) at the end of the day to avoid overnight risk. They mostly trade for small increments - fractions of a point - so if the stock opens way against them it will take alot of trading to make back the loss. Their rush to close positions at the end of the day - long or short - creates liquidity that longer term players may want to take advantage of to add to or dump their positions. Specialists and market makers also participate because they want to protect the value of their inventory, which may be collateral for loans - so they like to manage the volatility when necessary. There is an order type, market on close, that probably tends to suppress volatility as well, since the buyer or seller primarily wants to transact - adding to liquidity - and is not holding out for price - which is what causes more extreme price changes.

John_168

Thanks, Mark. I can always learn something from your comments.