Cerner Corp, Change Healthcare Inc., Grifols, S.A. and others reached higher-than-usual trading volumes.
Friday's session summary: Leading equity indices in the US rose as Dow Jones ended the session at 31,083 after a 2.47% gain. S&P 500 closed the day at 3,752.75, having gained 2.37%.
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 Friday with some health care stocks recording abnormally high trading volumes. Here's a recap:
Cerner | 777% above rolling average Continuing its recent sideways trend, Cerner closed at $94.92 after a flat day Friday
Trading volume peaked at 38.20 million shares Friday, thereby obliterating the daily average of 4.92 million by 777%. With around a month of flat trade under its belt, pointing in a similar direction, Friday's session was more of the same — Cerner moves 0% to close at $94.92 Friday.
Having set a significant high of $94.97 11 months ago, the healthcare information technology supplier is trading 35.81% lower. The Nasdaq has been doing worse in 2022, it has been passing it by 49.09%. The company has a market cap of $27.74 billion with an average daily trading volume of 4.92 million shares. Cerner has a forecast of $1.47 billion with an EPS of 87.15 cents.
Change Healthcare | 215% above rolling average Bullish phase under threat as Change Healthcare stays range-bound
Change Healthcare outpaced its average daily trading volume (13.47 million) with 28.98 million shares traded Friday. While Change Healthcare is on a month bullish trend, Friday's session put the brakes on the ongoing uptrend — Change Healthcare moves 0% to close at $27.49 Friday.
Grifols | 315% higher than rolling average Grifols is showing signs of life, up to $6.08 (1.33%)
Grifols outpaced its average daily trading volume (1.84 million) with 5.79 million shares traded Friday. While Grifols was in the midst of a 4 day downtrend— in which it lost a total of 5.44%— Friday may indicate a change of direction; Grifols ended Thursday at $six. Friday it went up to $6.22 only to drop back, yet still managed to close at $6.08.
Grifols has shed 42.75% over the past three months. So far in 2022, it has been under-performing the Nasdaq by 1.25%. The company's market cap is $4.94 billion with an average daily volume of 1.84 million shares.
— Average trading volume refers to a 21-day rolling average.