Calm waters presented 3 heavy volume marlins in stocks yesterday

Take a look at the following healthcare stocks: Abiomed, Signify Health, Inc., Incyte Corp and others showed higher volumes than usual.

A recap of yesterday's session: Markets did not have a clear cut direction — Nasdaq closed 12,072 after a stable day. Dow Jones closed at 33,800 after a flat day.

Why Trading Volume Matters

Trading volume is simply the total number of shares traded including both buy and sell orders. If a stock has appreciated on high volume, it is more likely to be a sustained move compared to an appreciation with low volume. Typically, high volume trading sessions are considered significant occurrences and closely watched by traders.

While trading was mostly sideways yesterday, several healthcare stocks were actively traded. Here's an update:

Abiomed | 506% higher than rolling average

The stock has been trending positively for about 3 months. The medtech company's market cap currently stands at $17.18 billion with an average daily trading volume of 3.10 million shares.

With 15.70 million shares traded yesterday, Abiomed beat its daily average by 506% to cap off a frenetic trading day.

Signify Health | 261% higher than rolling average

Signify Health outpaced its average daily trading volume (3.69 million) with 9.63 million shares traded yesterday.

Having set a significant low of $11.19 10 months ago, the healthcare platform developer is trading 172.3% higher. The stock has been trending positively for about 9 months. With around a month of flat trade under its belt,

Incyte | 278% higher than rolling average

After 20 days of level trading, Incyte went up. Yesterday's session shows improvement: the biopharmaceutical company went up to $74.59, gaining 1%.

Incyte outpaced its average daily trading volume (1.68 million) with 4.69 million shares traded yesterday.

— Average trading volume refers to a 21-day rolling average.