At the start of each trading day on the U.S. equity markets, there's a period of time known as the Opening Cross. Jesus is not usually involved. It's just the few minutes around the beginning of the session.
Think of the first few seconds of a horse race: everyone jumping out of the starting gate at once, jockeying for position, bumping into each other. A lot of activity. That happens at the Opening Cross on Wall Street as well, as investors trip over each other to initiate their first trades of the day.
The end of the day sees a similar situation: the Closing Cross. In the last 10 minutes of the session, there's another period of heavy activity, as traders rush to get their final transactions set for the session, or try to close out their positions before the end of regular trading.
Because of all this activity, a lot of imbalances can occur during these key time windows. An imbalance means the system has more buy orders than sell orders...or more sell orders than buy orders. The situation leads to prices that can jump around during the Opening and Closing Crosses.
The net order imbalance indicator supplies information about these imbalances on the NASDAQ. It consists of data about buy and sell orders during the crosses, providing insight about the supply/demand dynamics of particular stocks.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What are Limit Order, Sell Limi...4 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is a limit order? you want to sell a thousand shares
of Colonel electric it was demoted after they cut their dividend the shares have [Scissors cuts dividend in half]
been trading wildly between $15 and $25 a share you don't want to feel like a
moron for having sold them at fifteen bucks when six weeks later they kissed
25 with tongue so what do you do well you put in a limit order that is you put
a limit of a minimum price of 25 bucks a share for Colonel Electric such that [Pile of stocks appear]
those shares will simply sit in your account unsold maybe forever until
somebody out in the wild blue yonder of Stockland is willing to pay twenty five [Woman standing at a colonel electric stand]
dollars or more for the shares where you have a minimum price limit of 25 bucks a
share in your order so here's to hoping they sell and don't get further demoted [Man carries stock into car]
Sargent Electric is just a place you don't want to go
Up Next
What is an All or None Limit Order? An all or none limit order says the investor wants their order filled entirely or not at all. An investor may r...