By on March 8th, 2010 3:35pm Eastern Time
The media is bullish as the talking heads are all looking for the market to trade higher throughout 2010. The Federal Reserve Bank is bullish and says the economy is recovering, meanwhile, they continue to keep the fed funds rate at zero percent. The President's administration and those inside of it keep saying the recession is over as they also continue to sandbag the monthly job number.
So I guess everything is OK. The major stock market indexes have recovered most of January's decline and everyone is bullish. The one problem that I see from where I'm sitting is the lack of participation. Today the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:SPY) is trading just 91.5 million shares and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSE:DIA) is trading less than 5 million shares as of 3:15 pm EST. Where are the markets participants today? Really when you stop and think about it, where have they been in the past year?
Every now and then the markets seem to have a surge in volume. However, most of the heavy volume days come when the stock market declines. There are a few exceptions when the markets have surged higher on strong volume trading days. However, the buy side volume days, can be counted on one hand. If everything is so great on planet stock market where are the participants and where is the volume?
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