"Did you mean January or december?"
I think he did mean December.
OBV is an algebraic sum, over some specified period of time, of the volume for a day of trading times the amount of change in the stock price during that day. In other words, if the stock is "up" on the day, compared with yesterday's close, the entire volume is given a "+" value; conversely if the stock is down on the day, the entire volume is given a "-" value.
Over time, OBV is one measure of whether the stock is being accumulated or distributed, ie whether it is responding to buying pressure or to selling pressure.
There are numerous sites which compute and display OBV. My favorite is bigcharts.com
You can go to www.bigcharts.com ... select interactive ... and then key in TSIS. This permits you to select a variety of time frames (I always begin with 1 full year, then adjust as appropriate for seminal events during the year). The OBV is one of the options listed under "lower indicator". Try it for yourself.
Personally, I prefer to use MFI (Money Flow Index) which I believe gives a better indicator of actual demand vs supply pressures. Recall that OBV assigns a plus or minus value to the entire day's trading and then adds a number of days algebraically. MFI, on the other hand, sums all individual transactions during the day, weighting each trade by the size of that trade. Thus a trade of 10,000 shares carries a greater weight than does a trade of 100 shares ... regardless of whether the net effect on the day is up or down.
Sadly, MFI over the past 30 days does *not* confirm the accumulation ... yet. bigcharts.com
For the truly dedicated, there is yet another measure called ADI (Accumulation/Distribution Index). This measure ignores all trades below a certain (very arbitrary) cutoff. The intent is to focus on "serious investors" as opposed to "retial noise". I don't know of any sites which compute ADI, so I built a spread sheet which computes it from the daily tick chart. So far, using an arbitrary cut off of 10,000 shares or more ... hardly "institutional trading"! ... there is not a lot of movement, although the "BS" trades of 100 shares seem to be disappearing (probably MM manipulation, IMHO).
Again, beware of any technical analysis for thinly-traded stocks. Your mileage may vary. Etc.
JSb. |
