This week, Wednesday precisely, marks the end of the quarter. So before quarter's end we usually see window Dressing or the "Art of looking smart" as managers get rid of dogs that didn't perform and buy leaders that did, even if they only held it for a week before quarters end, their prospectus will show "XYZ winner" as a stock in their portfolio for the previous quarter and prospective clients can look at "XYZ winning stock" and come to the conclusion that this fund was in the right place with asset allocation, it's a real scam, but it happens the most at year end, then quarter end and even at month's end as more funds are reporting to clients monthly results.
What is T+3?
Here's the official explanation from the SEC In essence, it means the last day for these transactions to take place to make stocks appear or disappear from the fund's portfolio would be today.
Which brings us to this afternoon's sell-off and volume.
As you can see by the daily closing volume, today's volume was weak
However, at the end of day when Wall Street is most active, take a look at the volume, a huge increase. Had volume been similar to the last hour all day, we'd have more then 2X the closing volume and to make matters more important, the volume up until the close, had it held today's trend, would have looked more like this...
About a 3rd less and one of the lowest volume days since last year. In other words, the increase in selling before quarter's end settlement was huge and to the downside. I think you can draw your own conclusions as we move forward.
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