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[Music] welcome back to another video. I'm Andrew, the CEO of Quan Data, and in today's video, we're going to go over dark pool levels. So let's get right into it. We're going to cover what dark pool levels are. How you can use dark pool levels. We're going to cover an example on the stock Alibaba. We're also going to cover another example on the ETF SPY. We'll also go over some things to keep in mind while trading with dark pool levels.
So, what exactly are dark pool levels? So on Quan Data, we sum all the dark pool trades at each particular price level to create a dynamically updating list of the top levels per time frame that you choose. For example, if $100 million is executed at the $405.50 level for SPY in the dark pools, that specific level is going to contribute to an overall price level. So all of the trades that are traded at the $400 and $5.50 level are added up on Quan Data to create that aggregated price level, and that's what we call a dark pool level.
So in the dark pool levels tool, you'll see, you know, if we get multiple trades on the $405.50 level, um, you'll see that that aggregated notional value is displayed next to the price level. So if that $100 million is executed at $405.50 and $405.50 already had $500 million executed at it, then that new total aggregated level will show $600 million exchanged at the $405.50 level. So these top levels are helpful because they create strong zones of support and resistance that can then be charted. And in the examples I'm going to show you later on, we'll demonstrate these support and resistance zones.
So let's get right into how you use these dark pool levels. The primary purpose of utilizing dark pool levels is to uncover significant institutional support and resistance levels. The larger the level for a particular ticker, the more likely that the specific price level will act like a magnet. Once that level is reached, the price action may consolidate or reject at that strong dark pool level. On the flip side, any large level below the stock's current price acts as a support when the stock changes direction. As the notional value of a particular price level increases, the stronger that level becomes. And again, you know, as I move into the next few slides, I'll show you some examples where this is really put into action, right? Because as more notional value comes in for particular levels, those levels are going to become stronger, quote-unquote magnets where price is going to sort of, you know, be attracted to. Ultimately, through creating these support and resistance levels using the dark pool levels, the institutional grade data assists and empowers retail traders by assisting them in the decision-making process of entering and exiting trades. Because commonly, traders will utilize strategies that consist of buying on support or selling on resistance, or even buying on the break of the resistance level and selling on the break of the support level. So dark pool data can help contribute to these strategies by providing these strong support and resistance zones that the price action is really centered around, right? Because all of these different strategies that retail traders are using, typically at the basis of these are support and resistance, right? We're analyzing in real time the price action as it reacts to certain price levels, and dark pool levels are just another way that you can chart specific strong institutional levels.
So let's move right into our first example. So on the Quan Data platform, you can actually look at the aggregated dark pool levels over whatever period you want. So if you look at this example here, we're looking at the dark pool levels on BABA for the last year, right? In this image right here is a chart of the one-year, one-day chart for BABA on the same day that these dark levels were pulled up. So you'll see that I charted the top five dark pool levels from the Quan Data platform onto the chart. So you see the one, two, three, four, five top levels there. And if you look at the second chart image here, it's the same exact chart with the same levels charted on them. The only difference is this chart is a bit zoomed in, as it's looking at the 20-day, one-hour time frame. So if you're looking at this example here and you're looking at the information that we have posted on the charts, you see that we could have set an alert at the $97.50 level, which is this dark pool level right here. Again, it's one of the top five dark pool levels that had over $500 million in notional value traded at it, right? So over $500 million was executed at this level right here, this $97.50 level on the symbol BABA, right? If we look at the chart at $97.50, as soon as we broke through that $97.50, we had that run all the way up to $106.50 in just one day, right? Because that was a very strong price level that you see we actually rejected in the past. So this level right here was already a strong resistance level, and it not only reflected on the chart but it was also reflected in the dark pool levels. So when we broke over that $97.50 level, we ran all the way to $106.50 where it then rejected and came down, and it's likely going to test that existing $97.50 level that was previously a resistance and now has become a support. So using this example, you can see that on the breakthrough, that previous resistance level became a new strong support level, and we can expect it to retest that level as I mentioned and potentially bounce off of it in the future. And this, you know, this is just one example of how dark pool levels can be used, right? We have the resistance level that was again one of the top levels with the top notional value as depicted by the bar right here. This shows the top levels, and these are the top levels over the past year. And as we broke over that top level, you see we really respected the next hundred dollar level, which is right here in this zone right here, which we had three pretty significant levels here, but you see, you know, we're respecting these dark pool levels, and that's why they're so significant.
Before we move on to the next example, I'm also going to show you where on the Quan Data platform you can access these dark pool levels. So let's go ahead and switch over to the Quan Data platform and we'll go from there.
All right, so this is the main dashboard of the Quan Data platform. Once you're on the platform, you'll go ahead and go over to the left-hand side. You'll see a sidebar with all of our different tools. You'll go ahead and come down to where it says Historical Dark Pool and Dark Pool Levels. We'll go ahead and click on that, and then you'll see we have the Historical Dark Pool Prints here. We actually show the dark pool prints as they come in in real time. And again, so the levels are just the aggregated prints at the specific price level that they executed at. So let's say we're going to look at SPY, we would type in SPY in the ticker field, and then we would choose our date. So if we were looking to chart on like a one-year, one-day, we would go back a year, which would be August 26th, and we hit submit. And these are the top levels, the top aggregated levels for the dark pool prints over the past year. And, you know, in the following example, we're going to go over SPY, and you'll see that I charted the top five levels for the surrounding the current price for SPY. So I just wanted to show you where you can access these dark pool levels on the Quan Data platform. Let's go ahead and switch back over to the slideshow and we'll go over our next example, which is SPY.
So the next example, I wanted to pull an example that a lot of people trade, and, you know, a lot of people trade SPY. So on SPY, I took the top five levels again surrounding the current price. Since SPY has significantly more volume than most other names, just charting the top five levels is going to be difficult because it's a volatile symbol. So I took the top five levels surrounding the current price and I charted those again on the one-year, one-day chart, and we're looking at the top levels for the past one year. So as you zoom into a smaller time frame, again, it's the same levels charted. The only difference is this chart is just zoomed into the 20-day, one-hour chart, so we can see it on a smaller time frame. You'll see that the $412.06 level, which is this level right here, had over $9 billion in notional value exchanged at it. And, you know, as you can see in this image right here, you'll see that that $412 level was a very significant support level. And since SPY is so volatile, you know, we really want to look at support as zones instead of just particular price levels because, you know, we might come under, fake under, or, you know, bounce around specific levels, come just under it or just over it. So we want to look at these zones because if we're looking at particular price levels, it might be too specific for such a volatile name, right? So if we look at this $412 level, you can see that it acted as a strong support level after we pushed over it and rejected almost perfectly at this $421.80 level in the zone right here. We had that almost perfect rejection today, and we came back down to test that $412. And, you know, we'll see what happens at that level. Maybe we base, consolidate, and, you know, reverse to the upside, or maybe we continue that downside move and break under that dark pool support zone. So this is just another example of how dark pool levels can be used as support and resistance levels. It's the same thing as Fibonacci levels or any sort of other method that you use for charting support and resistance. The same rules apply. The only difference is how you're actually charting that specific level because we're actually using previous executions in the dark pools that were likely traded by large institutions, and we're using those levels as magnets to determine our support and resistance levels instead of just taking arbitrary rejections that happened in the past that could have been the result of anything from fundamentals to technicals to earnings, right? These are actual price levels that have repeated activity and repeated notional value on them, and that's why they're so significant because these levels are heavily traded levels, and the more volume these levels have, the stronger they become.
Let's move right into some things to keep in mind when trading with dark pool levels. The first is, the levels are better off being used as zones. And the reason for this is because, like I said with SPY, when you have such a volatile name, you know, you're not going to really expect it to respect something to the cent, right? Like if we have a $405.51 level on SPY and that's the top dark pool level with the highest notional value, yes, that level is likely going to, you know, act as a resistance or support or whatever, but we might have, you know, five other prints in the $405.50 level. We might have a $405.51, $52, $53, $54 print with high notional value as well, and that entire $405.51 to $55 zone is even stronger than just the one individual level itself. So when you have multiple levels that are close to each other, they form a zone, and those are really the strongest support and resistance levels that you want to look at are those zones because the price might come up or down to that zone and then bounce, reject, consolidate, or whatever within that zone. And that's just something to keep in mind when you're trading with dark pool levels.
Another thing is that, you know, obviously the same rule applies for any support resistance level that you chart is that resistance levels can become support levels, and support levels can become resistance levels. After you break through a resistance level with strong volume and you've pushed up and you've hit maybe your next target, it's likely going to come back down and test that previous resistance level, and it's going to test it as a support level. Same thing applies for dark pool levels. We have, you know, these resistance levels that become support levels and these support levels that become resistance levels.
The third thing is that the more notional value you have at a particular level, the stronger that level becomes. And this is a point that I've stressed several times throughout this video is that, you know, if we have $100 million traded at a particular level on SPY, that level is not going to be as strong as a level that has $25 billion traded at it. So the more notional value you have at a particular level, the stronger that level becomes. And depending on what time frame you're trading or what time frame you're analyzing, the further you go out, the larger that notional value is going to become for particular levels. And obviously, those levels with larger notional value traded at them are stronger levels. So, you know, depending on what your particular strategy is, you may want to start at a larger time frame and work your way down, just as you would with a typical charting platform. You'd start with your one-year, one-day, draw up your support resistance levels, maybe move down to your, you know, five-day, 15-minute, five-day, five-minute, and then your one-day, one-minute, whatever, you know, whatever strategy suits you best is what you should do. But just keep in mind that the levels with more notional value result in ultimately stronger levels, and those levels act more like magnets than the levels with smaller notional value. And the Quan Data platform does a great job of visually depicting the size of the levels, as, you know, on the platform you can see the bar and how big that level is.
And the last thing is, you know, obviously the more confluence, the better. So use multiple tools. Don't just use dark pool levels and only trade off of dark pool levels. You want to use your existing strategy, your order flow, your alerts, your news, whatever, you know, these are all things we provide on the Quan Data platform: order flow, Quan Alerts, live news, OI by strike, max pain. We have a plethora of different tools that you can use that help contribute to this overall confluence and this overall execution that ultimately helps you enter and exit certain trades in the market.
But with that being said, thank you for watching. If you have any questions, feel free to visit our website. We have a live chat in the bottom right-hand corner. You can ask us a question at any point. We do plan on creating more videos in the near future. So if you want to subscribe, maybe drop a like or drop a comment on what you thought about the video, that would be greatly appreciated. And of course, you know, make sure you give our platform a try. Sign up to our free 7-day trial. Let us know what you think.
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