Trades footprint (trade count per level)

What is counted

Every time the feed reports an execution at a price, the trades footprint adds one to that level, whatever the quantity. A single 200-lot print counts as one; two hundred one-lot prints count as two hundred. The measure therefore depends on what the data source considers an execution. Some feeds deliver each fill, others aggregate fills that share a timestamp and price, and the counts are only comparable between charts fed by the same source.

• Trade count per level, per bar, with no time normalisation.
• Dividing volume by trade count gives the average trade size at that level, which the Average Trade Size indicator computes for the whole bar.
• A level with no executions stays blank; it is not a level with zero trades.

Why traders look at it

• Few prints carrying a large volume suggest a participant working size at that price; many small prints suggest fragmented, often algorithmic, participation.
• A jump in trade count without a matching jump in volume points to smaller average size; Average Trade Size tracks that ratio per bar. Trade Size Distribution and Large Trade Ratio, despite their names, measure how volume concentrates across price levels, not the size of individual prints.
• Rising trade count at a level where price stalls is one way to describe absorption from the tape side, alongside delta.
• On crypto pairs, exchange feeds split orders across many fills, so counts run higher than on CME and should only be compared within the same pair.

In Senzoukria

Trades is a mode of the Numbers family in the Footprint type chip, alongside Bid × Ask, Delta and Volume. Volume + Trades shows both figures per level in one cell. In the Profiles family, Trades Profile draws the counts as horizontal bars inside the candle, and in the Heatmap family, Heatmap Trades shades each level by its count.

In the indicator catalogue, Trade Count plots the number of trades per bar in a pane, Trade intensity is the same count drawn as a histogram, and Tape speed EMA smooths it over N bars. The Trade Count description in the catalogue states the point plainly: an equal volume in 3 trades or in 300 does not tell the same story.

Common mistakes

• Comparing counts between a Rithmic feed and a bridge feed, or between CME and a crypto exchange. The definition of an execution differs.
• Treating trade count as a proxy for time. On tick bars the count per bar is by construction almost constant, so the measure only carries information on time, volume or range bars.
• Reading a high count as institutional activity. The count says how fragmented the flow was, not who produced it.