The volume drought that we've suffered this year has been tough on entities that rely on high-frequency trading based strategies. The pause has led to talk of an industry shakeout of sorts and has pushed firms to more urgently step up activity in other asset classes.

But the recent market pyrotechnics--driven by uncertainty in Europe and the U.S. debt ceiling drama--has led to a revival of volume that has provided a welcome respite for the high-frequency trading crowd. Bloomberg, via the Washington Post, notes that volume has roughly tripled in early August. The equity volume from Aug. 4 through Aug. 10 "was a record for any five-day period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Credit Suisse. The daily average of 15.97 billion shares beat the previous record of 15.94 billion from Sept. 15 through Sept. 19, 2008."

For traders across the board, mass uncertainty is often a trading event. High-frequency traders led the way in both directions. The big surge in volume, to be sure, also reflects a lot of activity in ETFs, which require lots of work behind the scenes to create or redeem individual shares. Of course, this affects mainly the big issuers. The small caps continue to languish. The big question right now is whether this upturn in volume will last or whether it will fizzle.

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