Sow My Seeds

On the trading platform, there are “Buy” and “Sell” and “Last” done price quoted. Also, there is "Buy Vol" and "Sell Vol". What do they mean? Here's what we see with the stock SINGTEL:

JUST LIKE BUYING APPLES

Stocks, in a very general concept, represent ownership in a company. Buying stocks in a stock market is very much like buying apples in a fruit market.

Everyday, when the fruit market opens, people who want to buy apples or sell apples will gather in a large open field. Everybody's very civilised here, so they will queue up. At the front of the buy queue, there will be a signboard displaying the price at which buyers are willing to buy apples at. Likewise, at the front of the sell queue, there will be a signboard displaying the price at which these sellers are willing to sell apples at.

Let’s say that today apples are transacted at $2.49. At the buy side, there are buyers lining up in the $2.48 queue, the $2.47 queue, the $2.46 queue, and so on. On the sell side, there are sellers lining up at the $2.49 queue, the $2.50 queue, and so on. Then a buyer comes, he's really hungry and he wants to buy a few apples now, he will then buy apples directly from the first $2.49 seller. So, $2.49 becomes the last done price, and the SellVol will decrease.

Likewise, if a seller really wants to sell his apples, maybe because he has an over-harvest of apples, he will sell his apples directly to the first $2.48 buyer. When that happens, $2.48 will become the last done price, and the BuyVol will decrease.

And that would only be for apples, which is liken to just a single stock like SingTel on the stock market. Thus, the stock market on the whole, is just like a really huge fruit market, with tons of different kinds of fruits, and thousands of buyers and sellers everyday.

Name means the stock name.

BuyVol means the volume (3,631,600 shares) queuing to buy at $2.48.

Buy means the best buy price $2.48 on queue.

Sell means the best sell price $2.49 on queue.

SellVol means the volume (316,800 shares) queuing to sell at $2.49.

Last means the last done price.

Now, let's look at the next part.

Volume means the total volume transacted from market opening till now.

Prev means previous, which means the closing price of last market day.

Open means the opening price of today.

High means the highest price transacted during the day.

Low means the lowest price transacted during the day.

Trade Summary is an important tool for judging the buying and selling pressure of a stock for the day.

Say you are observing to buy the stock Noble*. There was a huge selldown for the day. Opening its Trade Summary will give you an idea on the highest and lowest prices traded for the day.

"Volume" column: gives you an idea of the volume transacted at the various prices. Look out for the price level which had the most trades done for the day. This gives you a gauge on a possible support or resistance level. For the example above, many of the trades were done between 0.665 to 0.685.

"BuyVol" column: volume that has been sold down to buyer's prices

"SellVol" column: volume that has been bought up at seller's prices.

In Noble's case here, you can see there is much more BuyVol than SellVol, indicating more selling than buying, mostly transacting at Buyer's prices. (Yes, you have to think the opposite!) Think about it this way: buyers are in queue, and sellers are selling down to the buyer's price. So it is as though the buyers are commanding the price.

If you are looking to buy, then you would want to see the buying pressure change (ie. SellVol increase) for the better before deciding to buy the stock.