Everybody wants a panic sale, they want a capitulation. Well folks I am willing to wager that it will not happen. And I think darkpools have something to do with this. Consider the following and the original.
Dark pools are on a hot streak. They’re tearing through volume records and turning into big-league market centers in their own right.
Goldman Sach’s Sigma X dark pool yesterday executed 406 million shares, making it the seventh-largest market center for U.S. equities. That put Sigma X in line behind Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, the New York Stock Exchange, BATS Trading, Direct Edge ECN and the National Stock Exchange. And ahead of all other venues.
Sigma X’s volume is up 100 percent over the last seven weeks, according to Rishi Nangalia, head of product development at Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading. "It’s a virtuous circle," he said. "We have more volume passing through from more clients and their algos, and as a result of higher fill rates, we get more flow, which in turn further increases the match rates." This surge is taking place against a backdrop of higher equity market volume overall and greater volatility.
If you are wondering what a dark pool is, here is a definition.
A slang term that refers to the trading volume created from institutional orders, which are unavailable to the public. The bulk of dark pool liquidity is represented by block trades facilitated away from the central exchanges.
Also referred to as the "upstairs market."
Investopedia Says… The dark pool gets its name because details of these trades are concealed from the public, clouding the transactions like murky water. Some traders that use a strategy based on liquidity feel that dark pool liquidity should be publicized
What this means is that all of those pretty dressed guys speaking on Bloomberg, or CNBC who are saying, "where is the volume?" the answer is *Not on your exchange*. The original idea behind a dark pool was to facilitate the trading of extremely large blocks of shares without affecting the market. Imagine you are Buffett or Gates and you want to buy or sell large blocks of shares. You would use a dark pool.
Thus those traders with the pretty jackets can look all they want for the volume since the volume has moved elsewhere. Ok, having cleared this what does this mean for the market. First dark pools are unregulated, and right now that has people concerned. Secondly you should be able to see the trades after they happened. Though when they are marked on the books makes we wonder. Logically you should be getting the trades made right away, but sometimes I wonder. I even wonder if all trades are recorded. I would like to say, yes they are, but I wonder. I don’t have an evidence to the contrary, but I wonder. These days with so many exchanges I don’t think we have an complete oversight. And making things stranger is the interest by the exchanges to get into dark pools. What this implies is that an exchange with a dark pool will have to sets of places to exchange shares; public and the non visible dark pool.
At the end of the day in terms of your indicators I think you should take volume with a grain of salt. Think of it as an approximation in the relative sense, not an absolute.