Stopping volume
Stopping volume is a burst of unusually large volume at the extreme of a directional move after which price stalls, read as the aggressive side spending its remaining orders into the level. It is distinguished from absorption by which side is doing the work: stopping volume is the aggressor running out, absorption is the passive side holding.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
What it looks like on the bar
A move has been running for several bars. At its extreme, one bar prints a volume spike far above its neighbours, concentrated near the high of an up move or the low of a down move. The next bars fail to extend. On a footprint, the spike sits in the cells at the edge of the bar, and the delta at that edge is often strongly in the direction of the move that is about to stall: the buyers were still aggressive, but there were no more of them behind.
Absorption versus stopping volume
The absorption guide puts it simply: absorption is the passive side soaking up flow, stopping volume is the aggressive side running out of fuel. Both appear at turns, and both are more informative when an imbalance runs into the level at the same time.
| Stopping volume | Absorption | |
|---|---|---|
| Who is active | The aggressive side, exhausting itself | The passive side, holding a level |
| Where on the bar | At the extreme of a move, after several bars in that direction | At a level that can sit anywhere, often mid-range |
| Volume shape | A spike relative to recent bars | A concentration relative to other levels in the same bar |
| Price behaviour | Stalls on subsequent bars | Fails to move within the same bar |
In Senzoukria
There is no indicator labelled stopping volume. The closest catalog tool is Climax bars, an overlay in the Tape & flow group that marks bars where both volume and range exceed their recent mean by a number of standard deviations (defaults: 20 preceding bars, 2 sigma), with a dot at the bar's high. Because it requires range as well as volume to be extreme, it catches the wide climactic bar and not the narrow high-volume stall; a stopping-volume bar with a compressed range is read directly on the footprint cells instead. Delta at High and Delta at Low, in the Delta group, show the net aggression in the top or bottom ticks of each bar (default 3 ticks) and help see whether the extreme was still being pushed when the move stalled.
Common mistakes
- Reading any high-volume bar as stopping volume. The pattern needs a preceding move and a stall afterwards.
- Treating it as a completed reversal. Exhaustion can be refuelled; the footprint trading hub calls it a warning, not a signal.
- Ignoring the bar type. On volume bars every bar carries the same size, so a volume spike cannot exist there; read range and delta instead.
- Confusing a roll or a news print with exhaustion; both can produce a one-off spike with no positioning behind it.
Related
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Frequently asked questions
- Is stopping volume the same as a volume climax?
- They overlap but are not identical. A volume climax is a statistical observation: a bar whose volume, and in Senzoukria's Climax bars also its range, is extreme relative to recent bars. Stopping volume adds a reading: that extreme happened at the end of a move and price then stalled. Every stopping-volume bar is a climax of some kind; not every climax stops anything.
- Where does the delta sit on a stopping-volume bar?
- Typically in the direction of the exhausted move, at the extreme of the bar. In an up move the top ticks show buyers still lifting offers, which is why the bar prints a spike, but the subsequent bars show that no further buying arrived. A Delta at High reading that is strongly positive on a bar after which price fails to extend is the textbook shape.