# Number of buyers and sellers - how important?



## Muschu (24 April 2013)

Hi
I am curious as to how much weight investors put on the number of "showing" buyers versus sellers.

To use an example:  MFG, after closing today, shows 18 buyers for 32000 units as opposed to 33 sellers for 120,000 units.

Yet during the day there were 1500 trades for 290,000 shares and the SP went up 3%.

The query is how much, if anything, does the "showing" number of buyers and sellers mean?

Are institutional investors simply ruling the day?

Just curious.  Thoughts welcome.


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## JIMBO1 (29 April 2013)

None, but I've noticed when the stock is rising it is likely to have more volume on the offer as buyers are more likely to be hitting market then quoting on the bid.


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## pixel (29 April 2013)

If it's "real" orders, as opposed to ones and twos per position, I tend to keep an eye on numbers of orders. In certain cases, I also keep an eye on the moving picture of total number of shares at each level. 
When I say "certain cases", I mean order boards that don't have too many levels. Anything above $5 is less useful, but when I'm following a share that's trading around, say, 50c and each change shifts the balance one way or the other, I use that as some kind of motion alert - if you know what I mean.

However, as 'bots infiltrate more and more of the Market, the market depth and picture on screen becomes decreasingly useful as a guide. Case in point was today's NEA:
Pre-Open, the highest offer sat on 23.5c, which suggested someone could have signaled interest up to that level. I bought into the Open while I got them for 20c; then I watched the price moving up to 23.5 - at which point, a flag showed up on my depth screen saying "potential iceberg"; so I took my 15% profit ... and waited.
As we all know now, NEA moved higher up - and I bought back in a half-cent higher. 

Had I not drawn some "hints" from watching md and mpic, I might have missed some profit.
Doesn't work with every stock though...


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