Price/Volume Correlation Indicator: Formula, Settings and How to Read It
Price/Volume Correlation compares the bar close with the bar's total traded volume and returns their Pearson correlation over the last N bars, the current one included. The result sits between −1 and +1, and the window is 20 bars by default.
Senzoukria · Indicators · Updated September 2026
Price/Volume Correlation ships with the Senzoukria desktop app, in the Momentum group of the indicator catalogue. It is drawn in its own panel below the chart.
What Price/Volume Correlation measures
Volume here is the total traded, with no split between buying and selling — that split is what the Price/Delta correlation covers instead. A positive reading means price has been rising as volume expanded, the participative push; a negative one means advances have come on thinning volume, or declines on growing volume. The calculation is a standard two-pass Pearson over the window, and if either side has no variance — a perfectly flat close, or constant volume — it returns nothing rather than zero, so an empty line means undefined, not neutral. Nothing is plotted before N bars have accumulated.
The formula, as implemented
This is not a description of how the indicator is usually defined elsewhere — it is what the shipped code computes, documented next to the implementation:
Corrélation de Pearson GLISSANTE entre le close et le volume total, sur la fenêtre des N dernières barres (courante incluse) — two-pass, cf. `pearson`. Lecture : > 0 = le prix monte quand le volume grossit (poussée participative) ; < 0 = les hausses se font à volume décroissant. Écart-type nul d'un des deux côtés (prix plat ou volume constant) → null, jamais 0. Défaut N=20. Warm-up (< N barres) → null.
How to read it
- Read the sign first: it says whether volume expands with price or against it. The magnitude only says how consistently.
- A shift from positive to negative while price keeps climbing means the advance is being made by fewer contracts, a change in participation rather than a reversal signal.
- Readings near zero say price and volume moved independently over the window, which is common around session transitions.
- Session boundaries matter: volume has a strong intraday shape, so a window straddling an open or a close partly correlates with the clock.
- Use it as context beside the footprint and heatmap; it says how much traded, never who was the aggressor.
Parameters and defaults
period (20) is the only calculation parameter. Short windows reach extreme values easily because a few bars can align by chance, while long ones dilute a genuine change in participation. Match the window to what you are studying — a few dozen bars for intraday shifts, more for session-scale context.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Period | number | 20 | 2 – 500 |
What it does not show
Total volume is direction-blind: a bar can trade heavily with buyers and sellers perfectly matched, and this indicator cannot tell that apart from one-sided trade. The measure is linear and scale-free, reacting to the shape of the relationship and never to its size, so a strong correlation can rest on negligible volume. On instruments whose volume is dominated by the auction schedule, or on crypto feeds where volume conventions differ between venues, the reading reflects those conventions as much as the market. It also requires a feed that carries volume, supplied and billed by your market data provider; without one the line stays empty.
Using it in Senzoukria
Add it from the Indicators panel of any footprint chart or candle chart. It runs on futures data from Rithmic or Databento and on crypto pairs from Binance and Bybit, on the same engine — the calculation does not change with the venue, only the data feeding it does. Market data subscriptions are billed by the provider, separately from the app.
Related indicators
See the full indicator library, or start with the order flow guide if you are new to reading aggression, delta and absorption.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a price/volume correlation near zero mean?
- It means that over the window, changes in the close and changes in traded volume showed no consistent linear relationship. That is a common and unremarkable state, not an error — most markets spend a good deal of time there. It is different from an empty line, which means the correlation could not be computed at all because one of the two series had no variance.
- Is this the same as On-Balance Volume?
- No. On-Balance Volume accumulates signed volume into a running total and therefore trends. This indicator computes a correlation coefficient over a fixed window, is bounded between −1 and +1, and carries no accumulation or memory beyond that window. It answers whether price and volume moved together recently, not how much volume has piled up on either side.
- Why does the indicator stop plotting when price is flat?
- Pearson correlation divides by the standard deviation of both series. If the close does not vary across the window, that denominator is zero and the correlation is undefined. Returning nothing is the correct outcome, since a printed zero would be read as an absence of relationship rather than an absence of data.