Tick volume
Tick volume is the number of price updates, or ticks, recorded during a bar, used as a stand-in for activity where traded volume is not available, typically on spot forex charts from retail brokers. It counts changes in quotes or prices, not contracts traded, so it cannot produce delta, a footprint or a volume profile in the order flow sense.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Three different counts
| Measure | What is counted | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Traded volume | Contracts or units exchanged | An exchange's trade feed |
| Trade count | Number of executions, whatever their size | An exchange's trade feed |
| Tick volume | Number of price or quote updates | A broker's price feed |
Why forex charts use it
Spot foreign exchange trades across many venues with no central order book and no consolidated tape. A retail broker's platform receives a stream of prices, not a record of the whole market's trades, so the only activity measure it can produce is how often the price changed. Tick volume tends to rise when the market is busy, which is why it is used as a proxy, but it describes the broker's price stream, not what traded in the market.
A worked example
In the same minute, a broker's EUR/USD chart shows a volume of 312, which means 312 price updates in its feed. The euro futures contract on CME, for the same minute, shows 480 contracts traded in 95 trades. The three numbers measure different things and cannot be converted into one another. Only the futures data carries an aggressor side, so only it can produce bid and ask volume per price, delta and a footprint. These figures are illustrative.
Why it cannot feed order flow tools
- No size: a price change of one tick with one contract and one with five hundred count the same.
- No side: a quote update is not a trade, so there is no aggressor to classify.
- Feed-specific: two brokers produce different tick volumes for the same minute.
- A delta built on tick counts measures quoting activity, not aggression.
In Senzoukria
Footprints, delta and volume profiles are built from trades with a size and an aggressor side, from futures data sources or crypto exchange trade streams. The Trade Count indicator shows the number of trades per bar and Average Trade Size divides volume by that count, both from exchange trades rather than from quote updates. The site's guide on forex order flow data explains why spot forex feeds do not support these readings and how currency futures differ.
Related
- Spot FX vs currency futures
- Forex order flow data
- Trade Count indicator
- Trade size
- Time and sales
- Tape reading
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Frequently asked questions
- Is tick volume a good substitute for real volume?
- It is correlated with activity and can show when a market is busier than usual, which is why it is used on forex charts. It cannot replace traded volume for anything that depends on size or aggressor side, such as delta, footprints, absorption or volume profiles.
- Is trade count the same as tick volume?
- No. Trade count is the number of executions on an exchange, taken from its trade feed, each of which has a size and a side. Tick volume counts price or quote updates in a broker's feed, which may or may not correspond to trades at all.