Share-trading analysis is a complex thing. The London Stock Exchange used to publish a monthly record of share dealings called the Official Gazette (though I’m sure it’s all available online now) over which I spent many hours of tedious labour trying to identify suspect share deals in quoted companies.
The OG was like a huge telephone directory, but without the names. Just column after column of numbers, giving dates, times, amounts and prices but no clue as to the identity of traders. In order to protect market confidentiality, trader IDs were all coded, and only the LSE had the code. This financial Enigma machine would have enabled me to crack some of the biggest insider-dealing stories of the 1980s and 1990s, but I never managed to obtain it.
But all the hours spent sifting OG statistics taught me one valuable thing: follow the volume.
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