That was the shares traded over the entire day. The technical minded guys, the high frequency traders, or the market maker/fund managers in The Pub’s stock thread can provide better insight than I am able. In this case the security soared in the light, after hours and pre-open trading sessions. Then the profit taking after that early surge depressed the stock price throughout the day. If there are more orders initiated and accepted from the sell side traders than the buy side then the price will fall, even if the volume of shares traded is higher than usual. The early price surge was met with selling pressure all the way until the 4pm regular session close by profit taking (sellers were initiating the orders). As far as the laws of supply/demand, with stock equities it should be perfectly balanced. Every share traded has a buyer and a seller. Except when the hedge funds and brokers break the rules and allow naked short transactions to occur and shares are sold that were never borrowed or existed. The artificial, illegal imbalance of missing share supply backfired on the GameStop shorts. The Reddit bros saw it and destroyed the hedge funds with their buy side orders. Wall Street money came to the rescue of the side that was caught cheating.
The supply of shares does not run out in a fair system. Other factors affect the market price, primarily a company’s ability to generate revenue and earnings (silver is a commodity though and the supply-demand of the actual metal should determine the prices of the various, related securities).
