Quercus said:
Look at this divergence of vol with a higher high, which I would
have thought indicates a poss short - and we know what
happened!
Young Quercus, an observation if I may. Never consider using
divergence on volume because this is what they teach in books,
and it's wrong. This is just my opinion, and as I trade using just
price and volume I've seen enough volume bars form to last a
lifetime.
It's not easy to explain, but I'll have a go.
The chart at the bottom of this post is ES, 10 mins.
Yesterday's (Monday 29th December) action was a trend, started
off by a strong double bottom. The 1097 area was stuffed full of
bulls, and on the two occasions the price dropped into that area
it was pushed up higher with a lot of force - you can see that by
the 'fresh air' around the two legs of the double bottom. As you
get double bottoms at the start of a trend, that was the clue that
it was going to be a trending day.
On the volume, A is where the big boys went long. At B the
shorts came in and the market changed direction. C is the point
where those shorts became longs, and you can see how long the
11:00 ET price bar was, indicating that there was huge bull
strength on that 10 min bar.
At D, the bulls added fuel to the trend by adding longs. And the
price continued to rise (so you know they were longs, not
shorts). And at E and F more longs were added, and the price
continued to rise.
So therefore, at this point you know that all the big volume bars
were longs, and so you know that it will take more than the total
contracts of these bars added together to turn the market.
As an easy example (not based on any charts), if there were
15,000 longs to start with, then another 10,000 added, then
another 10,000, and another 5,000 - you would need in the
region of 40,000 short contracts to turn the market.
So the way you trade this, in a nutshell (or perhaps an acorn in
your case - LOL), is to sit tight until you see the massive volume
bars which will indicate the end of the trend. Now, this can be
dangerous if you do not know what you are doing, as the volume
is often drip fed into the market by the big boys over several bars.
So hopefully that explains why divergence doesn't work on
volume - actually, it is a reduction in volume which continues the
trend.
The books and trading courses apply the divergence principle to
volume and they're wrong to do so.