Stock Volume Spikes on Christmas Eve, Leaving No Rest for Weary
(Bloomberg) -- Not even the truncated Christmas Eve session could halt the market rout that’s gripped investors for three months.
The S&P 500 plunged to a 19-month low amid a torrent of trading before the holiday. Some 630 million shares changed hands before 10:45 a.m. in New York, compared with the average of 300 million shares over the nine previous pre-Christmas sessions. Trading in S&P 500 shares was 38 percent above the 30-day average at this time of day and almost 60 percent higher than the 100-day mean.
“The more volatile things get the more volume surges,” Michael Antonelli, equity sales trader at Robert W. Baird, said in an email. “People don’t care it’s a session before Christmas when the U.S. equity market is acting like this.”
The S&P 500 fell more than 1.5 percent Monday, the biggest loss during pre-Christmas session since at least 2000, deepening losses after the index’s worst week since 2011. Traders reacted to news over the weekend that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called top executives from the six largest U.S. banks to discuss liquidity and a Bloomberg News report that President Donald Trump inquired about firing the central-bank chairman, adding to slew of concerns about global growth, a trade war with China, political gridlock in Washington and Fed rate hikes.
Equity markets close at 1 p.m. in New York.
The usual lull of the pre-Christmas holiday trading was nowhere to be found on Monday as all 11 sectors in the S&P 500 declined. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 1.6 percent after the worst week in a decade and small-caps declined for the eighth straight day.
A volatility spike on Monday resembled trading activity on Friday when volume in New York Stock Exchange shares going down exceeded those rising by the second-highest margin on record.
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