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What Your Volume Number Actually Isread this before any other page in this book

Evidence: ModerateBeginnerOrder flow · Data

On a stock, volume is the number of shares that changed hands, reported by the exchange, and every participant sees the same number. On a spot currency pair none of that is true. Trading is spread across dozens of venues with no obligation to report, so there is no total.

What MetaTrader shows for a currency pair is tick volume: how many times the price updated during the bar. It is not a quantity of anything. It is a count of changes, from one broker's feed, and two brokers will disagree.

The useful part: tick count is closely related to how active the market was, and activity is related to volatility. So it is a reasonable activity measure and a poor size measure — and every strategy in this book has to be built on the first meaning rather than the second.

Category
Order flow · Data
Timeframe
Any
What it measures
The number of price updates in the bar, from your broker's feed
What it does not measure
How much was traded, by whom, or in which direction
Where real volume exists
Futures — including currency futures — and exchange-traded indices. Not spot FX.

Valid setup

OF-06 · WHAT YOUR VOLUME NUMBER ACTUALLY IS EURUSD · M15 · the lower pane is bar range against its own average — an activity stand-in, not a volume print DATA 1.0825 1.0838 1.0851 1.0864 1.0878 1.0891 1.0904 ASIA — few price updates LONDON OPEN — activity multiplies MIDDAY LULL NEW YORK 1 2 3 bar range ÷ average range — a stand-in for the activity series, computed from these candles average ① Quiet hours: few updates, small ranges ② The open: many updates — activity, not necessarily size ③ Read it relative to its own average. Never absolutely ④ There is no total volume in spot FX. None exists ⑤ Two brokers will print different numbers for this chart ⑥ For real volume, use currency futures

Exact rules

Entry

  • Before using any volume rule, plot your broker's tick volume against another broker's for the same pair and period. If they differ materially, any threshold you set is broker-specific.
  • Use it comparatively, never absolutely: this bar against the average of the last twenty is meaningful; '14,000 ticks' is not.
  • If you need real volume, trade the futures contract — currency futures publish genuine exchange volume — and use it to inform your spot trading. That is the honest solution and it is available.
  • Never build a rule on the direction of volume in spot FX. Tick count has no sign, and any indicator that shows you buying versus selling volume on a spot pair is inferring it from price.

Stop loss

  • Not applicable — this page is a data page, not a trade.
  • The practical risk it controls is the largest one in this family: building a position on a number you have misunderstood.
  • Anything in this book that fires much more often on one broker than another is measuring the broker.

Take profit / exit

  • Use relative activity as a filter on entries you already have, which is what the rest of this book does.
  • Volume-based confirmation of a price event — a sweep, a break — is the defensible use. Volume as a standalone signal on spot FX is not.
  • If a page anywhere promises institutional order flow on a retail spot feed, the thing being sold is the interpretation, because the data is not there.

Build What Your Volume Number Actually Is

Reading this page is free and always will be. Taking it is what costs — the complete MQL5 for the rules above, yours to keep, permanently. Five of them cost $10 and they never expire.

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More from Order flow & volume

London 16:00 Fix Flowmonth-end rebalancingSigned Order Flow Continuationtrade with the tape, not against itVolume-Confirmed Liquidity Sweepthe spike is the evidence

Trading carries risk and most retail accounts lose money. Nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to trade. The chart is an illustration of the rules on constructed candles — it is not a record of a trade and not a backtest.