MERRY XMAS EVERYONE! CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT MAKES A SHARE PRICE RISE IN LAYMAN TERMS PLEASE! WHEN I LOOK ON THE TRADES PAGE OF A COMPANY AND SEE 1,8 MILLION SHARES BOUGHT AND ONLY 18,250 SELLS, THEN SURELY THE SHARE PRICE WOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY GO UP AND YET IT HASN'T EVEN MOVED IN THE SLIGHTEST, YOUR BASIC EXPLANATION WOULD BE MUCH APPRECIATED. MANY THANKS!!!

Davyairport. I'm not experienced in this. But remember that what has actually happened is that 1,818,250 shares have been sold and 1,818,250 shares have been bought.

The diference is that 1.8m have exchanged hands through sellers like you and I selling to people offering to buy on the left-hand side (bid side) of Level 2; and 18,250 have exchanged hands though people like you and me buying from people offering to sell on the right-hand side of Level 2.

If it's a SEAQ share, with all trades going through market-makers, then one must assume that they either desperately wanted a lot of shares because they had sold shares they had not got, or they are buying them in as cheaply nas possible in expectation of the price going up. But even then it is difficult to understand why the price has not risen at all - perhaps if people started buying, it would.

I'm sure someone else can explain it better.

davyairport - you need to get a look at Level 2 as that shows the order book from the Market Markers who fix the prices of shares. Although I've been buying & selling shares for over 20 years, it wasn't until I saw L2 (or even realised it existed) did the prices make any sense - (Although even that at times does not make sense.)

Try and go to one of the traders days, or go along to one of the meetings. Ask about Level 2 and someone may show you what it looks like & how it works.

The basic answer is that prices are nothing or very little to do with volumes bought and sold. Anyone advertising prices is perfectly entitled to quote whatever price he wants, and they do. For small cap shares traded by market makers, they set to the price to cause the volume flow that they want (in or out) and not the other way around. Of course any significant news will for all shares cause price changes on zero volume. The moral is that you can pretty much ignore buy/sell volumes except as a possible indicator of what the punters are doing. They do not mean that the price will follow in the same direction, in fact it will very often go the opposite way.