For most Southeast Asian investors
- Relative volume: Don't just look at the absolute value of trading volume; compare it against the stock's historical average volume for the same time of day. A breakout on heavy volume is meaningful, while a low-volume breakout is often a trap.
- Order book depth and spread: When spreads narrow and the order book thickens at the open and into the close, it signals improved liquidity and lower execution costs; when spreads widen at midday, limit orders are clearly preferable to market orders.
- Sector linkage: US stock sectors exhibit extremely strong effects—a leader stock's intraday moves tend to pull along other names in the same sector. Watching the synchronization among sectors such as chips, software, and energy can help you identify whether the action is driven by "individual stock logic" or "sector rotation." <
