Costco’s $2.26B Volume Ranked 27th Drives 166.71% Short-Term Strategy Surge

On August 11, 2025, Costco (COST) traded with a 0.79% increase, achieving a daily trading volume of $2.26 billion, ranking 27th among stocks by liquidity. The session reflected broader market dynamics where short-term momentum strategies leveraging high-volume equities have demonstrated outsized returns in recent years.

Backtesting of a strategy purchasing the top 500 stocks by daily trading volume and holding for one day revealed a 166.71% cumulative return from 2022 to present, significantly outperforming the benchmark index’s 29.18% gain. This performance gap of 137.53% underscores the compounding effect of liquidity concentration in volatile markets, where investor behavior and macroeconomic shifts amplify price movements in high-liquidity assets.

Such strategies capitalize on liquidity-driven volatility, where concentrated trading activity creates asymmetric risk-reward profiles. The results highlight how short-term capital flows can disproportionately impact stock prices, particularly in environments marked by rapid sentiment shifts. This aligns with observed market trends where volume-based strategies exploit temporary imbalances in supply and demand.

The backtest results demonstrate that liquidity concentration remains a critical driver of short-term equity performance. By systematically targeting high-volume stocks, traders can harness market inefficiencies arising from liquidity imbalances, a factor that has proven especially lucrative in turbulent macroeconomic conditions.