Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Where Did the Volume Go?

Although there are a couple days left in the 1st quarter of 2019, it is pretty obvious that there is going to be a significant decrease in trading volume among almost all categories of short domains.  We say "almost all" because there is one category of short domains that is doing fine on volume, and may even surpass Q1 2018 when all is said and done.  Can you guess which one it is???

Here are the numbers (from ShortNames):

CCC.com sales declined from 257 in Q1 2018 to 129 in Q1 2019.  

LLL.com sales declined from 33 sales in Q1 2018 to 18 sales in Q1 2019.

LLLL.com sales declined from 2,917 sales in Q1 2018 to 1,679 sales in Q1 2019.

NNNN.com sales declined from 11 in Q1 2018 to 8 in Q1 2019.

And....

NNNNN.com sales stayed almost perfectly steady, there were 886 sales in Q1 2018, and 867 have been reported in Q1 2019.  Almost no change at all.

It is not surprising to see the decline in sales volumes across the board, the market is still recovering from the last parabolic rise and fall in short domain prices.  Look at what Bitcoin is doing recently.  But what is intriguing is that NNNNN.com domains seem to be largely unaffected by the decline in volume.  This might be a good sign for NNNNN.com domains, or it could just reflect that these domains are less likely to be developed than the other types noted above, and instead are more likely to be traded.  Will be interesting to track volume the rest of the year, and see how the various pieces of the short domain market adjust to the new realities.