In stock trading, volume is the total stock bought and sold. Can we know the buy and sell numbers separately?

Answer 1

The number of shares sold has to equal the number of shares bought. However, there is some confusion about what the numbers mean.

For exchange traded stock (e.g., NYSE) the volume reported is equal to the number of shares traded. For example, if you sell a thousand shares & I buy those shares, then the trade is reported that 1000 shares was done.

It works differently for NASDAQ stocks. They would report the same trade as 2000 shares. That is because you sold 1000 shares to the marketmaker and the marketmaker sold 1000 shares to me. They report both sides separately.

In order to put NASDAQ volume on equal footing with NYSE volume, you have to divide by two.

The interesting numbers to have would be the volume of trades initiated by buyers and by sellers. This is called "order flow" and is the single best predictor of future price changes.

Answer 2

For every buyer there must be a seller. If that doesn't occur the price is set at another price where that can occur. The only thing of concern would be the nature of those shares, in other words are one hundred small investors selling 100,000 shares to a single large buyer or are small investors picking up small lots from one large distribution. This is difficult to determine for most people. The average trading sytem hides important data.Short sellers are always of concern to a stock watcher but except for trading activity, which is sometimes hard to interpret, it is found by paying a fee after the fact or looking at periodic short seller tables.

Answer 3

Not the answer, but this is something to look at

Answer 4

financial section of newswpaper or online financial