3 stocks endured heavy volumes amid market jump yesterday

HollyFrontier Corp, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp, Imperial Oil Limited and others reached higher-than-usual trading volumes.

A quick recap of where the last trading session ended: Leading equity indices in the US rose as Nasdaq closed the day at 12,100, having gained 0.76%. S&P 500 gained 0.36% and closed at 4,105.

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.

Price action was mostly bullish yesterday with some energy stocks recording abnormally high trading volumes. Here's a recap:

HollyFrontier | 119% slightly greater than rolling average

The company has a market cap of $7.14 billion with an average daily trading volume of 4 million shares.

Trading volume peaked at 4.78 million shares yesterday, thereby obliterating the daily average of 4 million by 119%.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp | 219% higher than rolling average

With 18.76 million shares traded yesterday, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp beat its daily average by 219% to cap off a frenetic trading day.

Imperial Oil | outperformed daily volume average by 97% yesterday

Slightly down but mostly flat: Imperial Oil ranged between $53.32 and $54.3 before closing at $53.59.

Yesterday's trading volume peaked at 482,553 shares, thereby blitzing the daily average of 499,129 by 97%.

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