Anchored VWAP (volume-weighted average price)
What the average share bought since a chosen date actually cost — each day’s price weighted by how much stock changed hands that day.
An ordinary average price treats every day alike: a session in which a million shares traded counts exactly as much as one in which fifty million did. A volume-weighted average price does not. It weights each day’s price by that day’s volume, so the days when the stock was genuinely being bought and sold in size dominate the figure. The result answers a more useful question than "what has the price been lately". It answers "what did the average share bought over this stretch actually cost", which is why a share above its volume-weighted average is often described as one where the money committed over that period is collectively in profit, and a share below it as one where that money is under water.
"Anchored" means the averaging starts on a chosen date rather than rolling over a fixed number of recent days. The choice of date is the whole point, because it decides which question is being asked. Anchored at the first session of the calendar year, it shows what this year’s buyers have paid on average. Anchored at the day a company last reported its results, it shows whether the market has sustained what it was paying once the numbers were public — which is a different and sharper question, and one stocks-llm can only ask for US-listed companies, because the report date comes from an SEC filing and there is no equivalent in our UK sources. In both cases the date the averaging starts from is shown on the page beside the number.
One qualification matters more than any other and appears on every page here that shows this figure. A true VWAP is calculated from every individual trade, at the price it happened, weighted by its size. stocks-llm holds one closing price and one volume figure per session, so what is shown is the volume-weighted average of daily closing prices. Over a stretch of weeks it tracks the real thing closely; over a handful of sessions it can differ noticeably, because a day that opened low and closed high is represented here only by where it finished. That is why no reading is produced until at least ten sessions have passed since the anchor. Two further limits are worth stating: a price arriving at its anchored average is a description of where it is rather than a forecast that it will stop there, and the average is silent about cause — a company back at its average because the story changed sits in the same list as one that simply drifted. stocks-llm computes this nightly from split-adjusted daily closes and declines to report it where a session’s volume is missing rather than treating an unknown as no trading. Nothing here is advice.
Stocks trading at this year’s average price paid →
See more terms in the stocks-llm glossary.
Informational only — NOT financial advice. This is an educational definition, not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Metrics on stocks-llm are delayed data and may be missing or stale. Always verify information independently and consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision.