All the Volume Is On the Sell Side

In our day and age, when implied correlation is approaching 1 with each passing day, and when nuanced relationships are ignored, as every correlation somehow immediately becomes causation only to be invalidated, chewed out and left for dead, there is one certain and virtually guaranteed statistical relationship left, that not only persists day after day but has now become its own self-fulfilling prophecy. We speak of course of the (inverse) correlation between stock prices and volume: i.e., "volume up, stocks down; volume down, stocks up." Rinse, repeat, over and over and over. Rarely has this correlation been as pronounced (although we have been discussing it for well over a year) as over the past 12 weeks. Behold.

What this means is that any distributions only occur to the downside, and that the second retail gets suckered into stocks once again, for whatever reason, the selling pressure will again materialize as the algo decides to take advantage of the "sidelined" money and be a better seller into every bid.