u/swusa

I've been staring at the SPY chart and noticed something that doesn't sit right. Since the March 30 trough, SPY hasn't just recovered.

It was in fact 18% above the trough and 8% higher than the old high.

But volume tells a completely different story.

Average daily volume since the trough is 53.8M shares, compared to 88.3M in Q1.

That's a 39% drop. It dropped fast and has flatlined around 48M, roughly half the Q1 average.

So what's going on?

EDITs:

1. The numbers are for SPY only. I did check across major S&P500 indexed ETFs (SPY+VOO+IVV+SPLG), in aggregate the total volume did drop 38% post the March trough. Same story as SPY. So looking at SPY seems sufficient.

2. SPY volume by year below. 2024 saw low volume but had a great run. So low volume is not be bad necessarily according to history. BTW, has SPY volume been trending down since 2020?

● 2020: 100.4M (avg daily volume), +17.2% (return)

● 2021: 73.8M, +30.5%

● 2022: 94.8M, -18.6%

● 2023: 81.9M, +26.7%

● 2024: 57.4M, +25.6%

● 2025: 72.4M, +18.0%

Over the past few weeks (roughly mid-April through early May), I’ve been watching a mix of mid and large-cap stocks, and one thing that stood out is the amount of dispersion in short-term outcomes even among broadly similar “value-leaning” names.

For example, within that window:

• ELV and WCC saw strong upside moves (+20% and +18% range)
• ADM and HUBG also moved meaningfully higher over the same period
• At the same time, MCK and SEB declined noticeably despite sitting in similar broad sector and style buckets

Overall it felt less like a uniform directional market and more like uneven repricing across similar types of stocks over a relatively short time frame.

Curious if others are seeing similar dispersion across “similar type” stocks lately, or if this is just concentrated in certain parts of the market.