Volume settings help identify two main conditions - securities that do not trade (or are thinly traded) and securities that have high or above-average volume.

It is usually more difficult to buy or sell securities that are thinly traded. If you are holding 5,000 shares of a security that normally trades 2,000 shares per day, it may take you a while to sell your position.

Stock Filter can also identify securities that trade in excess of their moving average. Securities breaking out of consolidation patterns or new highs should generally do so with high volume. Above-average volume can sometimes be used as a leading indicator of price movement.

Number of shares traded:

Use this setting to define a minimum number of shares traded.

Number of Trades:

Using number of trades instead of number of shares traded eliminates high volume caused by large block trades, and may be preferable if searching for "Penny" stocks, where thousands of shares can be bought for few dollars.

Volume times Closing Price:

Stock Filter multiplies closing price by volume to generate dollar values. This filter may be preferable to Volume filter (above) as it will identify both low priced stocks trading large volume as well as higher priced stocks trading at lower volume.

Volume Above Average:

This setting is used to identify securities trading above average volume. Using the default settings as an example, only those securities that traded one and one-half times the volume of the average of the last 20 days will pass this test.