Glossary · Chart and price

Volume

The amount of an asset traded in a period; on exchanges a gauge of participation, but not available on Sky Trade, whose feed has prices only.

By Sky Trade editorial teamUpdated November 5, 2026

Volume counts how much was traded — shares, contracts or coins — during a period. On centralised exchanges it is a real, reported number, and traders use it to judge participation: a breakout on rising volume is read as more convincing than one on thin volume, and a rally on falling volume as tiring.

Forex is different. There is no single exchange, so nobody sees the total traded volume of EUR/USD. What many forex charts show instead is tick volume, the number of price updates — a proxy, not traded volume.

It also helps to know what volume is not. It doesn't indicate direction: heavy volume can accompany a top as easily as a breakout. And volume indicators inherit every weakness of the data feed behind them.

Sky Trade's feed has no volume data: market pairs arrive as prices only, and OTC instruments are generated by Sky Trade's server, where volume would be meaningless anyway. That is why there are no volume-based indicators in the terminal. Traders there judge activity through proxies such as the trading session, liquidity conditions and candle size. More in volume basics.

Example

On a stock exchange, a breakout on 3 million shares against a 1 million average is read as strong participation. On Sky Trade that check isn't possible, because the chart has no volume data.

Learn more in the academy

Volume basics: what trading volume tells you and where it is missing
What volume shows in exchange markets, why forex has only tick volume, and why volume analysis cannot be used on Sky Trade, whose feed has no volume.

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