On Tuesday, Petrobras trading volume hit as high as 25.8 million shares compared to 4.1 million at Chevron and 5.2 million for Exxon. At its peak this year, Petrobras sold 90 million shares back in March while Exxon, which is 10 times larger than Petrobras in market cap, sold around 30 million at its peak in December.
“It’s never a good sign when stocks slide on high volume,” says Vladimir Signorelli, founder of macro-economic investment research firm Bretton Woods Research LLC. “That always gets traders anticipating that the worst is yet to come. It’s a pretty good market veto to whatever is happening in Petrobras and in Brazil.”
According to the company, over 40,000 individual shareholders have sold and never returned to Petrobras over the last 12 months. The same bloodletting holds for institutional investors. In April 2015, Petrobras had 7,696 investment firms holding its shares. As of April 28, that number is now down to 3,916.
