You're certainly right, its very hard to dicern a directional bias from these trades, but in my mind this is how i see things so im just giving my opinion
It's very interesting indeed, I pulled up the 2x bull QQQ (QLD)
3rd and 11th biggest trades for the year entered at or near the close which is very interesting considering that the big guys don't short sell the (bull) levered instruments, they would just long the ultra short (for some reason volume leaders wont pull up a chart for TQQQ - which the big guys use more)
Here are QQQ 5 largest trades for the day. There actually were trades taking place at the highs (although it was the smallest trades of the day 370K), price did move lower substantially and there was a trade at the close as well.
Also you need to understand that Blue bubble are blocks and orange bubble are sweeps
Sweeps are the big guys moving to the bid/offer to get filled. blocks are just limit orders
Your observations are correct.
For every argument I make, there's a counter argument that's just as strong.
It really could go either way here. the directional conviction is actually quite poor for bulls and bears. if Pull up charts from April/May you'll see what i mean with strong conviction
The only thing I'm confident of is that the next move is going to be vicious. Once it gets going, they're not going to let you get in on a retrace. Lockout move all the way - my bias is bullish to end of year and ive made this quite clear
These trade also came in today on levered ETFs:
$UPRO - 1.1M shares @ 39.30. Rank #42
$SPXL - 1.1M shares @ $74.67. Rank #9
$SSO - 4.1M shares @ $51.87. Rank #12
$TQQQ - 4.2M shares @ $34.88. Rank #14
$SPUU - 566K @ $82.40. Rank #2
Volume Leaders wont let me pull up an intraday chart but it will a 356 day of TQQQ
i hope this helps with your analysis
- sorry for long post
(20min delay)