A busy day for Cerner Corp, Change Healthcare Inc., ICON Public Limited Company, being the prominent health care stocks displaying higher volumes than usual.
A quick recap of where the last trading session ended: Leading equity indices in the US rose as S&P 500 gained 2.65% and closed at 3,678. Nasdaq closed the day at 10,676, having gained 3.43%.
Why Trading Volume Matters
Trading volume is simply the total number of shares traded including both buy and sell orders. If a stock has appreciated on high volume, it is more likely to be a sustained move compared to an appreciation with low volume. Typically, high volume trading sessions are considered significant occurrences and closely watched by traders.
Price action was mostly bullish yesterday with some health care stocks recording abnormally high trading volumes. Here's a recap:
Cerner | 777% higher than rolling average Cerner closed at $94.92 after a flat day yesterday, continuing its recent sideways trend
Trading volume peaked at 38.20 million shares yesterday, thereby obliterating the daily average of 4.92 million by 777%. More of the same: on a back of a month of trading sideways, pointing in a similar direction, yesterday's session was more of the same — Cerner moves 0% to close at $94.92 yesterday.
Change Healthcare | 215% above rolling average Change Healthcare remains on-trend despite dull session
With 28.98 million shares traded yesterday, Change Healthcare beat its daily average by 215% to cap off a frenetic trading day. Stable at $27.49 and still trending upwards, yesterday's session put the brakes on the ongoing uptrend — Change Healthcare moves 0% to close at $27.49 yesterday.
ICON | 306% higher than rolling average ICON posts solid session with 5.27% gain; upside capped at $184
ICON outpaced its average daily trading volume (620,543) with 1.90 million shares traded yesterday. Pronounced bullish sentiment in the market helped ICON to make a notable 5.27% gain yesterday, rising $9.16 and ultimately closing at $183.06.
9 months ago ICON reached a significant high of $309.7 but has consequently lost 43.85% since then. So far in 2022 it has been beating the Nasdaq by 10.58%. ICON's market cap is currently $14.92 billion with an average daily trading volume of 620,543 shares. $1.94 billion was ICON's last reported revenue with $2.86 being the current EPS.
— Average trading volume refers to a 21-day rolling average.