Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that volume conveys useful information to forecast stock price movements. We investigate the information content of volume for the stock indices of small-capitalization firms in the US and France. Information asymmetry problems tend to be more important for small-capitalization firms and it can be argued that the information content of volume should be more significant. We find that volume does indeed forecast returns of the small-capitalization stock indices. We also detect a positive contemporaneous relation between volume and absolute value of returns. The findings are qualitatively the same for data from the US and France
