So here is the situation. Its the NQ... quiet time, nowhere close to a key level that I can see. Below is a 5 sec chart of the area in question.
View attachment 159950
In that one 5 sec bar, 600 contracts get traded, and the height of the bar is really no different than the other bars.
Often I see the spikes in volume around key levels once price breaks through, and lots of stops gets triggered, and price can often shoot up 3 or 4 points, hence about 12 - 16 levels before all the stops are filled.
But here, price hardly moves.. why? How can you have so much selling, and buying, without the price moving if this is a quiet time? I understand at the open, you got lots of traders betting on long and short, so if price doesn't move too much, its because you have an equal number of people betting on both sides. That makes sense to me. But this doesn't. Price went up from here, but how was all this buying met with so many who were eager to sell?
Any thoughts are welcome.
I know that often times, the algos create a situation where all bids are removed for a few seconds, causing price to drop, and the algos are waiting happily a few points below to snatch up the contracts at a cheaper price. I see this all the time, and this makes sense to me and is something to watch for. But once again here, the volume is huge, and price hardly moves, so I cant make sense of it.
