Meta Strategic Shift and AI Deals Drive $15.29B Volume Ranking Fourth in Market Activity

Meta (META) closed 0.72% higher on Monday, with a trading volume of $15.29 billion—up 32.08% from the previous day and ranking fourth among all stocks. The surge followed a strategic shift in its Reality Labs division, where the company announced a 10% reduction in workforce to accelerate cost efficiency while expanding partnerships with AI startups for Metaverse development. Additionally, regulatory scrutiny eased as the European Union approved its antitrust probe into the company’s ad-tech business, with no enforcement actions required.

To evaluate the effectiveness of a "top-500-by-daily-volume" strategy, several implementation parameters must be clarified. The universe definition—such as U.S. common stocks on NYSE and NASDAQ—is critical. Trade timing conventions, including whether positions are opened at today’s close and liquidated at tomorrow’s close, or use open-to-open logic, will impact results. Weighting methods (equal, volume-weighted, or market-cap-weighted) also shape the strategy’s performance. Comparing against benchmarks like SPY is essential for meaningful analysis. Notably, the current back-testing engine requires constructing a synthetic portfolio price series to represent the daily basket before evaluation. This process involves gathering daily volume and price data for the full universe, followed by a back-test from January 1, 2022, to the present.