22. Modern Day Volume Issues

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to change one’s position and be bruised in a new place.”

—Washington Irving

Over the past few decades, the structure of the financial markets has undergone significant change. The market has been transformed from a quasi manually operated exchange into a highly competitive computerized network. These dramatic changes in trading practices and changes in regulations have resulted in soaring trading volumes. This, in turn, has caused considerable confusion over the use of volume as an analytical tool. Some have even gone so far as to say that volume data is no longer relevant. The Flash Crash only inflamed such suspicions.