Jako - Nice charting Jako - I've been reading your stuff on the AGO thread - very good. We must be on the same wave length because I have a video uploading now looking at volume on the XJO, XAO, and XSO. I'll do the banks after that sometime this weekend.
Mickey
A lot of volume spread analysis is "discretionary" - in that the individual bars by themselves require "context." Background strength or weakness is vital to interpreting any individual bar and THAT makes coding for scanning very complex . There is the "tradeguider" software developed by Tom Williams who teaches this stuff and that aids you in that it will pick up strong/weak bars and you can scan the market for "clusters" of strong or weak bars - BUT even then we are taught not to blindly follow the VSA indicators. We have to look at WHERE they occur. For exanmple - both strong and weak bars will pop up in any trend - but we give more weight to strong bars at the bottom of an uptrending channel than to the weak bars at the top of an uptrending channel - and we give more weight to "weak" bars at the top of a down trending channel while any strong bars at the bottom of a down trending channel require MORE confirmation. What I like about the "tradeguider" software (I'll show it in the video I'm uploading now) is that when these indicators come up, you can get more info from them as to how to interpret them and what the background should be and what to look for next in confirmation - It teaches you in other words as you go. BUT even the tradeguider software that specialises in this stuff doesn't pick up everything. What you could do is scan the way you normally would using indicators - and then looking at the results with VSA glasses. Or - perhaps you could scan for unusual volume at new lows and then put on your VSA glasses. If you get the software it will scan for stocks compared to an index and ping strong and weak stocks or it will scan for indicator clusters. In my sig I have the book "master the markets" that explains VSA and also "The complete VSA system explained." The second book will go through some trade setups. You have some setups that play out over 25 bars and we generally look back as far as 200 bars. So when you talk about time frames there are a few you look at depending on the scenario. An accumulation "campaign" from accumulation to mark up to distribution can typically take 3 to 5 weeks. And we typically interpret the volume on individual bars as being ultrahigh or low compared to the two bars behind it. I'm making it sound more complicated than it is but there is a learning curve involved, but its not too steep and once you start things start making a whole lot of sense and you can look at a chart and there will stuff on there that jumps out at you - places where in the past you would have been jumping in boots and all suddenly don't look so attractive - and places where things looked ordinary to you in the past suddenly present opportunity. My advice is to look at some of the tradeguider "youtube" vidoes and go to the www.tradeguider.com website and have a look around. They do have some plugins for other software packages as well so that may be worth a look.
