We have noticed that quite often when the number of shares bought exceeds the number of shares sold the share price sometimes goes down ( and in some cases by quite an amount eg African Eagle AFE today..11/2) Yet some share prices increase when there are more sells than buys eg African Diamond AFD, African Gold AFG today etc. Can someone please explain why this is, as the number or buys and sells has in the past been key to our trading strategy. Is the information on Ample or Money AM concerning trades not accurate or are we missing something. Any answers / explanations would be really welcome.

Hi Buckets. We have the same problem here. We think the fundamentals of this company are fine and we understand that there will be little news until work begins again in earnest after the wet season ie in May. In the hopes of good news we have held on to this share even though it has fallen through what would have been our stop loss. Is the price falling because there is no news or are the MM making money by buying at a low price now in anticipation of selling at a much higher price when hopefully godd news comes through?

B2B

There seems to be no apparent reason for fall today execpt for fall in price of
gold. Have checked website no news on it unless someone selling to make a profit

Small tick up lately but still low volume. AFE need to issue some news shortly otherwise the price will lanquish in the summer doldrums.

Re the initial question in thread title - don't forget that - as well as some of the biggest trades being legitimately delayed for hours (or days in some cases), several brokers (Etrade, NatWest, TDW among them) are processing UK trades on exchanges other than the LSE - such as Virt-X - and those trades are not picked up in most data feeds.

Personally I would never put much faith in trade listings anyway, and wouldn't take end-of-day volume totals on trust except as a crude indication that the number must be at least that size or bigger.

Supply/demand means shares generally must rise when more buys.However,there are
a trivial number of exceptions - technical,etc.

brain2brain - you are correct, the buys and sells are often inaccurate, read the disclaimer on the trades pages. All you have to worry about is whether the price is going up or down. You need level 2 information (which costs) if you want accurate info.

Abbie - if there's more buys then sells who have the buyers bought from?

Sellers

And who have the sellers sold to?

i think buys and sells are done through the mm's (someone put me right if i am wrong) so it depends on how many the mm's buy or sell. So they could buy a million and only sell 1000. Therefore demand is low from investors/traders so the price goes down and vice versa.

But if they've bought a million, surely they'd be dropping the price all the way through?

The original question relates to building a strategy based on buys and sells. ie using the buy/sell analysis to predict price movements. My point is that the price at any time already reflects any imbalance - and so I question the relevance of the analysis as a predictive tool.

brain2brain also points out that sometimes the price moves in the opposite direction to that expected by analysing trades - so in a way the questioner is drawing the same conclusion - there is no correlation. The only things that matter are the price and volume - the individual trades are a red herring. The price at which the latest trade was executed is the best guide we have to the value of the share. And the volume shows us how 'committed' the market is to that price.

He also asks whether the information on ample and moneyam is not accurate - I believe that all LSE reported trades are fed through to both of these sites, and each reports them accurately, after making a stab as to whether the trade is a 'buy' or a 'sell'. So long as punters want this analysis, these sites are bound to carry on supplying them.

Gausie

There were only two trades this a.m. of 48 & 55. What's going on? Is someone taking the p*~# ?

Generally speaking more buyers than sellers must equal price rise i.e.the
economic law of supply/demand.

Thank u abbie.

Concise, precise, and utter twaddle.

If there is more folk wanting to buy than sell, then the price will
go up to attract sellers until it reaches a new equilibrium.

If there is more folk wanting to sell than buy, then the price will
go down to attract buyers until it reaches a new equilibrium.

The higher the volume, the higher the demand and the more powerfull
will be the move.

This is what other posters in this thread are also saying, IMHO.

But the 'Buy and Sell' columns have absolutely nothing to do
with any of this. All they do is record a transaction between a Buyer
and a Seller and are as about much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Melnibone.

I like the idea of a chocolate fireguard!!

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

:-)))

Gausie - twaddle ?
Are you suggesting the economic law of supply/demand is twaddle ?

I bit of illumination, if I may so venture.

Do remember that the buy/sell indication on a trade is a decent guess made by a little algorithm in MoneyAM's software. If it's too close to call, it gets put into the ? don't know category.

The reason for this is simple: the data feed from the exchange doesn't say if the trade is a buy or sell (and clearly, it is both, it depends where you're sitting). Think of a Market Maker to Market Maker trade: how do you classify that, as it doesn't include you (the punter).

It's just like the share price: it depends whether you're buying or selling.

B2b,
AFE is big blue today !

Thanks Safiande.

Its been a long wait. Lets hope it continues

B2B