Why average daily volume matters

Average daily volume is just a count: on a normal day, how many shares of a stock (or units of an ETF) actually change hands. Atlas shows it on every ticker and ETF card, and it's also how the roster itself was chosen - the 15 stocks and the 15-plus-15 US/Canadian ETFs on this site are the most actively traded ones, not a hand-picked "best of" list.

Why rank by volume instead of, say, company size or popularity on social media? Volume is a decent proxy for two things that actually matter practically: enough people care about this to be trading it every day, and it's liquid - meaning you could buy or sell a normal amount of it without the price jumping around just because of your own order. A stock that trades a few hundred shares a day can swing 10% on a single trade; one trading tens of millions a day generally can't.

What volume does not tell you is whether something is a good investment, fairly priced, or safe. A stock can be heavily traded and still be a bad idea, or be quiet and steady and a perfectly fine one. High volume often just means high attention - sometimes that's genuine investor interest, sometimes it's short-term speculation. Treat it as "this is easy to buy and sell, and a lot of people are watching it," not as a stamp of quality.