Volume Spread analysis

By KARTHIK MARAR What is Volume Spread analysis? Volume spread analysis is a new way of looking at the market. It more like the candlestick analysis taking into consideration the volume. However not all the candle stick rules apply here. The basic premise behind the volume spread analysis is that the market is basically moved by the “Smart Money”. The smart money accumulates the stocks at low prices. Then begins process of marking up the price. Then the “Dumb Money” starts entering the smart slowly. The smart money starts passing the ownership of the stocks to the dumb money. This process is called Distribution. Soon more and more dumb money starts rushing into the market not wanting to be left out of the big rally. Unfortunately the retail traders are the last to get in. Once the process of distribution is complete the smart money starts rapidly marking down the prices and the dumb money are left holding the stock which was bought at high prices. At the end the smart money is much richer and they can again start accumulating the stock at lower prices. The cycle continues. This one way explains why the move moves are slow and the down moves are very rapid. The process of marking up the prices and distribution is a slow process. It takes some effort to get the dumb money interested in buying into the rally. The mark down process is very rapid as the smart money’s intention is to trap the dumb money. They have to give very little chances to dumb money which is generally slow in reacting to exit. VSA attempts to read the moves of the smart money by looking at the price, volume and the spread of prices.

The foundations for volume spread analysis were laid by R.Wyckoff way back in the early 1930s. Wyckoff was supposed to have made fortunes with his principles. Wyckoff stared with a premise that price / volume / Time could provide a picture of the demand and supply from smart money (he called the smart money ‘composite man’). We will come back Wyckoff later in the thread. It would be nice to look at Wyckoff methods time to time as his work is the basic one and others have built on it.