i'm comparing volume to past capitulation bottoms. you're comparing it to low volume lulls. why?
Because that's the crux of the matter!
It doesn't look like perfectly justified to compare this "reversal" to past reversals. How come? Because "past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes" (or some variation thereof). Basically, you are judging things in retrospect, i.e. you look at past reversals which were in thousands of dollars (and sometimes in many thousands), and this reversal doesn't look like a reversal at all to you. Truth be told, it doesn't look like a reversal even to my own eyes, so I'm kinda with you on this
"past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes" refers to predictions about future performance. that's not relevant here. my point is about whether capitulation occurred according to discrete conditions. i've been referring to "capitulation" in the technical sense (see earlier link), which is indicated by high volume. "high volume" is a relative term that requires comparison to other similar events (major bottoms), otherwise it has no meaning. there is no prediction about future performance here, just comparisons to establish whether "high volume" actually occurred. re: the december bottom, it clearly didn't, by any possible metric. you need to cherry-pick and omit past samples in order to call december a "high volume" bottom.
discounting the february 2018 bottom is short-sighted for that reason. it took much, much more buying volume to establish that long term bottom than december. that's the underlying logic here: we're looking for huge volume to signify that everyone who plans to sell has sold. that's why the february bottom held for so long. sellers were completely exhausted.
Now try to gauge the price dynamics taking into account the possibility that we may be stuck in this range (say, 3k-4k) for years to come. In fact, that would be a pretty volatile range for the total majority of commodities, most blue chips as well as government bonds (e.g. treasuries). So how are you going to look at this rebound other than a major reversal? In other words, things should be assessed from a correct perspective. The one based on past performance is definitely not the right one in this market
in other words, "this time it's different" aka the most dangerous words in investing, lol. i don't have any interest in predicting what's going to happen the next few years. i do have an interest in observing when a capitulation bottom has occurred, because the subsequent rally is usually very profitable (unlike the recent bounce off the $3100s).