Tick Volume in Forex, What It Really Shows

[Fairman]

Tick Volume in Forex, What It Really Shows

Forex is decentralized, so there's no single volume number for the entire market. Most retail platforms show tick volume, which counts how many price changes occurred in a period, not the amount of currency traded.

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Is it useful? Somewhat. Tick volume tends to correlate with actual activity, so it can still provide hints.

What it can show:

- Activity levels: higher tick volume suggests more participation, such as around session opens and news
- Breakout strength: a breakout with rising tick volume may have more conviction
- Exhaustion: a spike in volume without further price progress can hint at absorption

What it can't show:

- The size of orders
- Which side is dominant
- Real institutional positioning

How to use it responsibly:

1. Compare current volume to recent averages
2. Use it as supporting evidence for what price is already showing
3. Pay attention to volume at key levels and during sweeps
4. Avoid building a strategy on tick volume alone

Alternatives for additional context: futures volume for related currency futures, or order flow tools offered by some brokers, with the caveat that data quality varies.

Know the limits of your data. Overstating what an indicator tells you is a quiet source of poor decisions.

Treat volume as a clue, not a verdict.

[PropScalpDesk]

For intraday work I'd compare against the same time of day rather than against the last twenty bars. The first M5 candles after the London open will nearly always carry more ticks than the Asian bars before them, so a "spike" there is mostly the clock. I keep a rough average per 15-minute slot for EURUSD and only pay attention when a bar is well above its own slot.

It's also worth knowing that tick volume is broker-specific. It counts quote updates in that particular feed, so two platforms can print quite different numbers for the same candle, and a broker that filters quotes harder will simply look quieter. Comparing readings across brokers tells you nothing.

On the futures suggestion, 6E on CME is the obvious one for euro. That is real exchange volume, but it's a futures price with a basis to spot, so its levels won't line up pip for pip with your MT4 chart. I use it for "was this move traded" rather than for exact levels.

Has anyone here compared tick counts from two brokers on the same morning? I'd be curious how far apart they were.

[LondonNewsTrader]

Alternatives for additional context: futures volume for related currency futures, or order flow tools offered by some brokers, with the caveat that data quality varies.

On futures volume, the CME euro futures contract is a reasonable proxy for EURUSD activity, though the main contract rolls every three months and volume shifts between expiries around the roll dates. If you use it, make sure you're looking at the front month or a continuous contract that handles the roll.

The pattern I find most useful in tick volume is around releases. Tick volume jumps on every data print because the price changes many times a second, regardless of how much is actually traded. So a volume spike on a release candle tells you there was an event, not that there was conviction. The more useful reading comes 20 or 30 minutes later: if tick volume stays elevated after the spike, the market is still repositioning, and the move has more chance of continuing.

Your caveat about not overstating it is right.

[Fairman]

I keep a rough average per 15-minute slot for EURUSD and only pay attention when a bar is well above its own slot.

Which days go into each slot's average? Mainly wondering whether release days are left in. The 13:30 London slot is the obvious problem. On payrolls and CPI days tick counts in that slot can be several times normal, so if those days sit in a 20-day average, the baseline for that slot gets pulled up and an ordinary busy afternoon looks quiet. A median per slot, or keeping release days in a separate baseline, would handle it. And what does well above mean on your sheet, a fixed multiple like 1.5 times, or something based on how much that slot usually varies?

[Shadow Trader]

PropScalpDesk asked about two brokers on the same morning, and I had both terminals open for a week last month. On the 08:00 to 08:15 London slot, one feed printed around 1,800 ticks on EURUSD and the other about 1,100, so the raw counts were nowhere near each other.

The ratio between them was steadier than I expected, staying between about 1.5 and 1.7 across the week. So a spike against its own baseline showed up on both feeds at the same bars, even though the numbers disagreed.

On Fairman's question, I went the median route. My baseline is the median of the last 20 sessions for each 15 minute slot, with payrolls, CPI and central bank days stored in a separate list that I only compare against each other.

For well above, I use the 80th percentile of that slot instead of a fixed multiple. The 13:30 slot varies so much that 1.5 times its median is almost routine, while the same multiple at 11:00 is rare.

[Shadow Trader]

A timing problem is coming up for anyone keeping slot baselines on the London clock. Britain leaves summer time on 25 October, seven days before America does, so for those five sessions US data prints an hour earlier on the London clock, at half past twelve.

Any per slot average keyed to London time will flag the 12:30 slot as unusually busy all week and the 13:30 slot as dead. The same mismatch happens in March, when the gap lasts closer to three weeks.

The fix is to key the afternoon slots to New York time and the morning ones to London time. It sounds fussy, but it keeps the data release slot comparing like with like.

The exhaustion idea from Fairman's list needs a definition before it means much. A workable one is a bar above the 80th percentile for its slot that closes inside the previous bar's range, at a level you had marked before the session.

LondonNewsTrader's point about volume staying high after a release fits here as well. If the bars twenty minutes later still sit above their own slot baseline, that is a far better continuation clue than the spike itself, which every release produces.

[FXS Prop Desk]

One practical use of tick volume is to compare it between sessions on the same pair. A breakout during the London session with rising tick volume is generally more meaningful than one during the late Asian session with low activity. Comparing tick volume only within the same broker's data matters, since different feeds count ticks differently.

Real volume from CME currency futures can also serve as a cross-check.

[Shadow Trader]

Most retail platforms display tick volume, which counts the number of price changes, not the amount traded. Because spot forex lacks a central exchange, genuine volume is unavailable to retail traders. Tick volume serves as a proxy, and studies show it correlates reasonably with real volume at the intraday level.

The limitation is that tick count depends on the broker feed. Different brokers deliver different numbers of ticks, so tick volume from two venues will not match. A volume spike on one feed may appear muted on another.

Scalpers who use volume-based indicators should be aware that results are specific to the feed. A cleaner substitute for real volume is CME currency futures volume, which is exchange-reported and publicly available with a delay or via data vendors. Comparing tick volume with futures volume for the same pair can reveal how well the proxy works. For short timeframes, tick volume still offers useful information about activity, provided its limits are understood.