Yesterday and today, volume in the All Ordinaries Index was in excess of 1,800,000,000 shares.
I've done a quick eyeball over the past two years and at no time can I see two days in a row where the volume exceeded that figure on two consecutive days.
There has been the odd day, usually associated with options expiry, when the volume was higher, but no time could I find two days in a row, even around options expiry when volumes tend to get skewed to the upside.
Further, the Percentage Volume Oscillator is now above 20%. In the past year the only other times when the PVO rose above 20% was associated with ETO Index and Futures Expiration.
So the past two days seem to indicate a blow-off top.
The average value per share traded yesterday was $3.3687. While the average value per share traded today was $3.1008. This is approximately an 8% drop in the average value of shares traded. A very significant drop suggesting that speculative issues today were more popular. The two days previous to yesterday had somewhat similar average per share values ($3.35 and $3.48).
Surprisingly, the Advance:Decline Ratio has fallen the past three days. The ratios to two decimal places were: 1.88, 1.83, 1.77.
This is still below the 2.0 level which was broken three times out of six back in early May when the market last topped. On another day the ratio was 1.98. So four days out of six back then were higher than any of the past three days.
CONCLUSION
What are we to make of all this?
1. Volume is up at multi-year highs. 2. The XAO is at a new multi-month high. 3. The Advance:Decline Ratio is lower than it was at the last high registered back in early May. 4. The average value per share traded was much lower today than the previous three days.
This looks very much to me like strong hands are selling out and weak hands are increasingly dabbling in speculative issues.
Such activity can only end badly.
There may be some days for this to run yet. Until it turns down, obviously the market is still going up.
And it could be that any turn may just be a pause and minor retracement before heading north again.
Nobody knows what will happen. But sometime in the next few days it just might get ugly.
(20min delay)