VWAP — volume-weighted average price

About

VWAP is the average price since the start of a session. Bars with more trading count more.

In KAGAMI, it is called VWAP in the Indicators list.

Click Indicators at the top of the chart.
Type VWAP.
Click it. The line appears on the chart.

It is free for every account.

What you see on the chart

One blue line, drawn over the price bars. A bar, also called a candle, is one slice of time.
The line starts again at the start of each session. A session is one trading day.
So the line can jump at the start of each day.
Early in the day, the line moves a lot. Later, it moves less.
Its name, VWAP, shows at the top left of the chart.

VWAP needs volume. Volume is how much was traded in each bar.

Opened KAGAMI from a link and see a line you did not add? It may be KAGAMI's own version. See KAGAMI's own version.

How traders often read it

Many traders read VWAP as the day's average price, weighted by how much was traded.
Some traders read a price above the line as buyers being stronger that day. Below it, sellers.
Some traders compare the price they got with VWAP.
Some traders watch what the price does when it comes back to the line.

AAPL, 15-minute candles over two sessions, with VWAP. 1 — after an early drop, the price comes back to the line and moves above it. 2 — a new session starts at 09:30. The line starts again from its first bar, so it jumps. 3 — in this session, the price stays below the line.

An indicator only describes past prices. It cannot tell the future.

The settings

To open the settings, point at VWAP at the top left of the chart. Click the Settings button (the gear).

The Inputs tab shows:

Source — which price of each bar is used. It starts at hlc3: the high, low and close added up and divided by 3.
Anchor Period — when the line starts again. It starts at Session, one trading day. You can pick a longer time instead, like Week or Month.

The Style tab changes the colour and thickness of the line.

When it can mislead

Early in the session. With only a few bars, one bar can move the line a lot.
Late in the session. The line carries the whole day. It hardly moves, even after a big move.
No volume. Without volume there is no line. A bar with no volume does not move it.
Different data. For US stocks, some data plans count only part of the market's trades. Then the volume, and the VWAP, can differ from other sites.
The last candle. The newest candle is still forming. Its value moves until the candle closes.
Each day starts fresh. With Session, yesterday's trading is not part of today's line.

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

An example

Open NASDAQ:AAPL on a 15-minute chart. Each bar is 15 minutes. Add VWAP.

These numbers are made up, to show the idea:

The first bar of the day has an average price of 100. 1,000 shares trade in it.
The VWAP is 100.
The second bar has an average price of 110. 3,000 shares trade in it.
The VWAP is now 107.5. That is (100 × 1,000 + 110 × 3,000) divided by 4,000.

The example as a picture. The grey dots are the average prices of bar 1 and bar 2. The columns below them are the shares traded. The blue line is the VWAP: 100 after bar 1, then 107.5 after bar 2. It moves closer to 110, because more shares traded in bar 2.

The busy second bar pulls the line closer to its own price.

Technical details

This part is for readers who want the exact rules. It describes the chart's built-in version first, then KAGAMI's own version.

The calculation

The chart's built-in version works it out in your browser, on the bars the chart has loaded:

Take the Source price of each bar (hlc3 = (high + low + close) ÷ 3 at the start).
At the first bar of each anchor period, both running sums start again from zero.
On every bar: add price × volume to the first sum, and volume to the second.
VWAP = (sum of price × volume) ÷ (sum of volume), from the start of the period up to this bar.

When the period starts again:

Session: at the first bar of each trading session, in the market's own time zone. For US stocks, a session is 09:30 to 16:00 New York time. For FX and metals, it runs from 17:00 to 17:00 New York time. Crypto trades all day, so a session is one calendar day in UTC, from 00:00 UTC.
Week, Month, Quarter, Year, Decade, Century: at the first bar of each new one.

Inputs

Input	Default	Range / options	What it does
Source	hlc3	open, high, low, close, hl2, hlc3, ohlc4	The price used for each bar.
Anchor Period	Session	Session, Week, Month, Quarter, Year, Decade, Century	When the running sums start again.

The Source short names: hl2 = (high + low) ÷ 2, hlc3 = (high + low + close) ÷ 3, ohlc4 = (open + high + low + close) ÷ 4.

Colours

VWAP (the line): blue #2196F3, 1 pixel wide, solid.

These are the chart's own defaults. KAGAMI does not change them. You can change them in the Style tab.

KAGAMI's own version

KAGAMI's servers also have their own VWAP. It is not in the Indicators list. The chart shows it only when it is opened from a link that already asks for it. Your browser does no maths for it. It only draws the values the servers send.

Settings: none. A link cannot change anything.
Price: always (high + low + close) ÷ 3.
The maths: VWAP = (sum of price × volume) ÷ (sum of volume), from the first bar of the UTC day up to this bar.
When it starts again: when the bar's calendar day in UTC changes, at 00:00 UTC. This is the same for every market.
No volume yet: while the day's volume is still zero, there is no value and no point.
Rounding: values are rounded to 6 decimal places.
Colour: sky blue, #38BDF8 in the dark theme and #0284C7 in the light theme. The line is 2 pixels wide.

How it differs from the built-in:

The day it uses. For crypto, both start again at 00:00 UTC. For FX and metals, the built-in starts at 17:00 New York time. For US stocks, it starts at the 09:30 New York open. KAGAMI's version starts at 00:00 UTC, which is the evening before in New York. Any bars before the 09:30 open that the data holds then count in KAGAMI's version.
It has no Source and no Anchor Period. It always starts again each UTC day.
Its colour is sky blue and its line is thicker.
Its values come from KAGAMI's servers, not from your browser.

When values change

The built-in is worked out again each time the chart gets new prices. That is about every 15 seconds on most charts.
The newest candle is still forming. Its price and volume change, so its value moves. Once the candle closes, its value stays.
Past values do not change, as long as the bars they use stay the same.
KAGAMI's own version asks the servers for new values every 5 to 60 seconds, depending on the chart. Its newest value also moves until the candle closes.
Indicators you add are not saved. They are gone when you reload the page.

Timeframes

VWAP is mostly used on charts with bars shorter than a day. The timeframe is how much time each bar covers.
On daily and longer charts, a longer Anchor Period, like Week or Month, averages across several bars.
KAGAMI's own version starts again every UTC day. On a daily or longer chart, every bar is its own day. So the line sits at each bar's own (high + low + close) ÷ 3.
Crypto charts also have timeframes of 1, 5, 10, 15 and 30 seconds. Stocks and FX start at 1 minute.

Edge cases

The first bar of a period: the VWAP equals that bar's price (if it has volume).
Zero volume since the start of the period: no value, so no line.
A bar with zero volume later on: it does not change the VWAP.
Flat prices: the line is flat at that price.
A gap at the open: the new period starts from the first bar's price, wherever it opens.