Understanding Tick Volume vs. Real Trading Volume: Why FX Volume Makes the Difference
What Is Tick Volume?
Tick Volume, visible in your MT4/MT5 terminal (Ctrl+L), represents the number of price updates within a specific bar or candle. Each time the price changes, the tick volume count increases by 1. However, this metric lacks critical details:
- It doesn’t reflect the direction of trades driving price changes.
- It doesn’t show the size of trades executed.
It’s simply the sum of price updates received by your terminal.
The Problem with Tick Volume
Tick volume varies significantly between brokers. In our past monitoring, we found that:
- Brokers closer to the interbank market provide more ticks.
- Brokers filtering or manipulating data feeds report fewer ticks, causing you to miss valuable price updates.
This variability means indicators based on tick volume deliver inconsistent results between brokers, even though all are reflecting the same Forex market. Relying on tick volume creates strategies that may work on one broker but fail on another. From our perspective, tick volume has little to do with actual trading volume and lacks reliability.
The Advantage of Real Trading Volume
FX Volume offers a completely different approach by providing real retail trading volume—a robust and reliable dataset. Since October 2018, our servers have analyzed and recorded trading volume data from multiple global sources.
Here’s why FX Volume stands out:
1. Unparalleled Scale:
In 2020, we analyzed between 250,000 and 1,000,000 lots in real-time, equivalent to $25–100 billion in unleveraged trading positions. While still a fraction of the multi-trillion-dollar Forex market, this volume provides actionable insights into price and volume correlations.
2. Comprehensive Data:
Real trading volume includes both the direction and size of open trades for any trading pair. This detailed information allows us to calculate a volume-weighted index for the eight major Forex currencies.
3. Consistency Across Brokers:
Unlike tick volume, FX Volume ensures identical results across all terminals and brokers. A strategy developed using FX Volume data with one broker will yield the same results with another—bringing reliability and confidence to your trading.
With FX Volume, you gain access to real, actionable trading volume data that reflects true market activity, helping you make informed decisions based on consistent and reliable insights. Why settle for incomplete and inconsistent tick volume when you can rely on the power of real volume with FX Volume?
If you like to get more information about FX Volume I recommend visiting our FX Volume FAQ by clicking here or the logo below
