I don't hold any NXT, but I've been following NXT for the past two weeks or so and noticed something I don't really get.

How come there are such large jumps in trading volume for NXT? Last week, there has been a period of it being at around $400,000-ish every day. This morning I'm pretty sure it was in the $30,000 range and now it's at $150,000. For comparison, when NXT was at $400,000, NMC and PPC, the two biggest "secondary" alts, were at $800,000-$900,000 trading volume and the market was quite calm in general due to crash recovery, holidays, etc. Right now, the market is booming and both those have trading volumes well over $3,000,000, with NXT, as mentioned, being way lower than before. Didn't watch other alts too closely, but I guess it's reflected there as well to an extent - at the very least I think it's the case for those coins traded on BTC-e.

I don't have any proof and can't find any historical comprehensive source on altcoin performances right now, so my memory might trick me on this one. Still, though, how is that possible? That, including the whole distribution mode of NXT, kinda scares me to buy in.

My source for data is coinmarketcap.com, by the way.