I have been monitoring the share volumes of Fortune Oil over the last 3 to 4 weeks and there is a three to one bias in favour of buyers on most days yet the shares tend to fall, why is this surely such positive demand should be pushing the price up? Can anyone explain what is happening?

take a look at the thread "Ask a trading question" - you'll find your answers there.

Hi hotrott,

........does anyone use other methods to work out prices love to know?
I analyse a company on a daily basis e.g.the latest information and try to
anticipate future information.I consider past performance to be almost
irrelevant.
rgds aj

I think what a lot of people forget is that whenever you buy a share someone is selling to you. Share price movement is all about supply and demand. A price will rise only if the balance of buyers is greater than that of the sellers.

Lets take an example :

Share XYZ has had good news and starts to rise. A large investor decides to take advantage of the buying pressure to liquidate his position. His broker or market maker starts to place his sell orders onto the order book. There is still strong interest in the stock and there is a flood of buyers. The price does not move though as all the buys are soaked up by the large investor's sell order.

Eventually the buyers start to diminish but still wanting to liquidate his position the large investor decides to keep selling at a lower price. Although it appears on the level 1 screen that there may be 90% buys for the day the price starts to move down as the investor continues to unwind his position.

That is just one simple example. Don't forget traders, brokers and market makers all like to take advantage of large volume to unwind positions or even to go short of the market. After a sudden rise in share price there is nothing like a swift drop to un-nerve weak bulls and allow the more savvy trader to get back in at a more favourable price.

Extremely high volume can help to detect tops and bottoms. I like to watch for 60, 120 or even 200 day volume highs associated with a 50 day (or more) high/low.

hotrott

... I think if the market wants -------------- I agree

qwento

Your first paragraph says everything i.e.supply and demand.
rgds aj