What does the volume indicator mean in the yahoo finance chart?

Question

Under the technical indicator on the top blue bar, there is an option to display the volume. It states that the volume is:

"Volume is the number of shares traded in a security during a given period of time."

What does this exactly mean? Does this refer to the number of shares sold or bought during that day?

Answer 1

yea I dont get it either .... What does the volume refer to?

It says the number of shares traded.... does this mean the numbers of shares that were sold (selling a stock) ... therefore, they are dumping the shares   OR the amount of shares that are being bought (more shares are being purchased from traders)????

Answer 2

You have the right idea.  It is stated as "given period" in case you are using a scale other than daily to view the stocks activity.  If you were to use a weekly scale, the volume (shares traded) would be for the entire week.

Hope this helps