How much has traded, bar by bar:volume shows how busy things are.
The total number of units or contracts traded during a given period.
In forex, true volume data is limited due to the decentralised market, so tick volume (number of price changes) is often used as a proxy.
In plain words
Volume is the amount traded in a period: the number of shares, contracts or units of currency that changed hands. On an exchange it can be counted exactly. Currencies are traded between many separate dealers with no central exchange, so a complete count does not exist.
See it move
Busy hour: the largest here
Why it matters
Currency platforms usually show tick volume in its place, which counts how many times the price changed in the period. It is used as a rough guide to how active the market was, on the reasoning that busier markets update their prices more often.
Worked example
An example only. The figures are round and invented for the arithmetic: they are not market prices.
A platform records 1,200 price changes in a pair during one hour and 300 during the next.
- 1Tick volume in the first hour1,200.
- 2Tick volume in the second hour300.
- 3Ratio1,200 ÷ 300 = 4.
The first hour shows four times the tick volume, meaning four times as many price updates, which suggests but does not prove that more was traded.
A common mistake
Tick volume is not the amount of money traded. A hundred price changes could accompany a few small trades or several very large ones, and each broker’s count reflects only its own price feed.
Check yourself
Educational information, not investment advice or a recommendation to trade.