Volume — how much was traded

About

Volume shows how much of a market was traded in each bar. For a stock, that is the number of shares. For crypto, it is the number of coins.

In KAGAMI it is called Volume in the Indicators list. A new chart usually opens with it already on. It is free for every account.

What you see on the chart

A chart is made of bars, also called candles. Each bar covers the same amount of time, for example 15 minutes. That time is the timeframe.

Volume draws one small column under each candle, along the bottom of the price chart.
A tall column means a lot was traded in that time. A short one means little was traded.
A column is green when its candle closed at or above its opening price.
A column is red when its candle closed below its opening price.
The colours are see-through, so the candles stay easy to read.
The name Volume shows at the top left of the chart, with a number.

AAPL, 15-minute candles, with Volume along the bottom. 1 — the first bar of the day: a tall column, so a lot was traded. It is red because its candle closed below its open. 2 — a tall green column: its candle closed above its open. 3 — the middle of the day: short columns, so little was traded.

If you removed it, add it again: click Indicators, type Volume, and click it. See Indicators.

How traders often read it

Many traders read a tall column as a time of busy buying and selling.
Some traders compare a price move with the volume under it. A move with high volume is often seen as stronger than one with low volume.
Some traders look for volume much bigger than usual. It often comes with news or with the market's open.
Some traders turn on the Volume MA line. It shows what a usual amount looks like.

AAPL, 15-minute candles, with Volume and its Volume MA line turned on (MA Length 20). 1 — the blue line shows a usual amount. 2 — a column about three times as tall as the line, under a big rising candle: a move with high volume, in the middle of the afternoon.

An indicator only describes past trading. It cannot tell you what happens next.

The settings

Point at Volume at the top left of the chart. Click the gear icon (Settings). The Inputs tab shows:

MA Length — how many bars the average uses. It starts at 20.
Volume MA — the kind of average: SMA, EMA or WMA.
Color based on previous close — off at first. When on, a column's colour compares the close with the bar before.
Smoothing Line and Smoothing Length — for an extra, smoother line. It is off at first.
Other Symbol — shows the volume of another market instead. It is empty at first.

The average lines are off at first. Turn them on in the Style tab: Volume MA and Smoothed MA.

When it can mislead

The last bar is still forming. Its volume keeps growing until the bar closes. Next to finished bars, its column looks too small.
It is one source, not the whole market. Crypto volume comes from one exchange. US stock volume in KAGAMI may come from one exchange only. It is then much smaller than all the shares traded.
FX and metals have no central exchange. Their volume counts how often the price changed, not how much money was traded.
Timeframes differ. A 1-day bar holds far more volume than a 5-minute bar. Compare columns on the same chart.
The open and the close are busy. For stocks, columns at the start and end of the day are often much taller. That is normal.
Colour does not count buyers or sellers. A green column does not mean buyers won. It only means the candle closed at or above its open.

Charts are for learning, not advice. Read our Risk Disclaimer.

An example

Open NASDAQ:AAPL on a 15-minute chart. These numbers are made up.

Say most volume columns reach about 100,000 shares.
Then one column reaches 400,000 shares. That is four times the usual amount.
Its candle closed above where it opened, so the column is green.
You can read it like this: in those 15 minutes, there was far more trading than usual. The price ended that bar higher than it started.

Volume does not say why that happened. It does not say what comes next.

Technical details

For readers who want the exact rules. Volume is the chart's built-in TradingView study. The chart draws it in your browser from the bars KAGAMI sends.

The calculation

Volume is not computed. Each bar arrives from KAGAMI's data with its own volume, and the chart draws that number as a column.

The colour of each column:

With Color based on previous close off: if open > close, the column takes the falling colour (red). Otherwise it takes the growing colour (green). A candle with close = open is green.
With Color based on previous close on: if close of the bar before > close, the column is red. Otherwise it is green. The first bar of the chart has no bar before it, so it uses its own open.

A made-up example: four candles, then the same four volumes twice. Each dashed line carries a close over to the next bar. 1 — Color based on previous close off (the start): each column compares its candle's close with its own open. 2 — on: each column compares the close with the close of the bar before. So the second and the fourth columns change colour. The first bar has no bar before it, so both rows use its own open.

The two optional lines:

Volume MA = the average of the last MA Length volumes, of the type chosen in Volume MA (SMA, EMA or WMA). It has no value until there are MA Length bars.
Smoothed MA = an average of the Volume MA line, of the type in Smoothing Line, over Smoothing Length bars.

Inputs

Name	Default	Range	What it does
Other Symbol	empty	any market	Shows another market's volume on this chart
MA Length	20	1 to 2,000	Bars in the Volume MA average
Volume MA	SMA	SMA, EMA, WMA	The kind of average for Volume MA
Color based on previous close	off	on or off	Colours each column by the close before it, not by its own open
Smoothing Line	SMA	SMA, EMA, WMA	The kind of average for Smoothed MA
Smoothing Length	9	1 to 10,000	Bars in the Smoothed MA average

Colours and place

KAGAMI sets the two column colours. Both are see-through.

Column	Dark theme	Light theme
Growing (green)	`#22C55E` at 45 % opacity	`#16A34A` at 45 % opacity
Falling (red)	`#EF4444` at 45 % opacity	`#DC2626` at 45 % opacity

The Volume MA and Smoothed MA lines are blue (#2196F3) when you turn them on.

KAGAMI keeps the chart's default place for Volume: inside the price area, along the bottom, not in a pane of its own. The chart adds Volume by itself when it opens. If you remove it, changing the market or the timeframe does not bring it back. Reloading the page does.

When values change

The newest bar is still forming. Its volume grows each time the chart refreshes: about every 15 seconds, or every 5 seconds on a seconds chart.
The bar that just closed gets its final volume on the next refresh. After that, it does not change.
Reloading the page reads every bar again from KAGAMI's data.

Timeframes

Each column covers its bar's timeframe. A longer timeframe gives bigger numbers.
Seconds timeframes (1, 5, 10, 15 and 30 seconds) exist for crypto only. They are built from one-second data and reach back about 24 hours.
US stocks follow US market hours, 09:30 to 16:00 New York time. Crypto trades all day, every day (times in UTC).
FX and metals: the volume counts price changes, as said above. Busy and quiet times can still be compared on the same chart.

KAGAMI's own version

KAGAMI has no separate volume calculation. Volume is data, not a formula.

Some links that open KAGAMI already ask for volume. KAGAMI then adds this same built-in Volume, with its default settings and the colours above.

Differences from the chart's built-in version

Volume in KAGAMI is the built-in study. Two things differ from the same study elsewhere:

The colours. KAGAMI's green and red, in a dark and a light version, replace the study's own colours.
The data. The numbers come from KAGAMI's data source: one exchange for crypto, possibly one exchange for US stocks, and price-change counts for FX and metals. Another website may show bigger numbers for the same market and bar.

Edge cases

Zero volume. A bar with no trades has a column of height zero, so you see nothing under it.
No trades at all. If nothing traded in a bar's time, the data may have no bar for it. The chart then skips that time.
Too few bars for the average. The Volume MA line starts only after MA Length bars.
The first bar is coloured by its own open, even with Color based on previous close on.