Current volume divided by the average volume for the same time of day, showing whether participation is unusual.
RVOL of 1.0 means normal; 3.0 means three times normal. It is the quickest way to tell whether a move has anything behind it. A breakout on RVOL 0.6 is suspicious; the same breakout on RVOL 4 has real participation.
Day traders scan for high RVOL because unusual volume usually means unusual news, and unusual news means liquidity and range.
Example: by 10:30 a.m. a stock has normally traded 400,000 shares. Today it has traded 2.4 million. RVOL is 6.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
Breakout and retest. Price stalls under the same level several times, pushes above it, then drops back to touch it from above before carrying on. That touch is the retest, where the old ceiling is tried as a floor. A break that falls straight back under it is a false breakout.The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.
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