Trade intensity Indicator: Formula, Settings and How to Read It
Trade intensity plots how many individual trades each bar recorded, drawn as a histogram measured from a zero baseline. It counts executions rather than contracts, which separates how often the market traded from how much it traded.
Senzoukria · Indicators · Updated September 2026
Trade intensity ships with the Senzoukria desktop app, in the Tape & flow group of the indicator catalogue. It is drawn in its own panel below the chart.
What Trade intensity measures
The value is the bar's trade count, the same raw number the trades-count series draws as a line, rendered here as columns from zero so that bar-to-bar differences in participation are easier to compare. Because a trade count can never be negative, a single color is applied to the histogram rather than a positive/negative pair. The count is a required field on every bar, so the histogram has no gaps and never interpolates a missing value. Dividing a bar's volume by its trade count gives the average size per execution for that bar, which is the main reason to keep both panes open together.
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:
Intensité du tape : tradeCount par barre en HISTOGRAMME — même métrique brute que `trades-count` (volume.ts, rendu LIGNE), livrée ici sous la forme pane native d'une intensité (barres depuis la baseline 0). tradeCount ≥ 0 toujours : une seule couleur, appliquée aux deux canaux du shape histogram. Pas de trou possible : tradeCount est un champ requis.
How to read it
- A tall column means many separate executions inside that bar, regardless of how large each one was.
- Read it next to volume: volume rising while intensity stays flat points to fewer and larger executions, while both rising together points to broader participation.
- A price move carried by a low trade count was made by few executions; that is a description of who moved it, not a statement about where it goes next.
- Compute volume divided by trade count when you want average execution size; a falling average size during a trend is a different observation from falling volume.
- Participation is not constant through the day, so compare a bar against comparable periods rather than against an absolute level you picked once.
- Turnarounds such as an exchange open or a scheduled release change the level of the whole pane, not the reading of one bar.
Parameters and defaults
Smoothing defaults to 1, which plots the raw per-bar count with nothing applied to it. Higher values, up to 200, smooth the series over that many bars: isolated bursts flatten out and the shape of the pane becomes easier to follow, at the cost of a plotted value that no longer belongs strictly to the bar it sits on. Color only changes the rendering, since the series has no sign and both histogram channels use the same value.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smoothing | number | 1 | 1 – 200 |
What it does not show
The count says nothing about direction: it does not separate buy-side from sell-side executions, and a quiet bar and a violent bar can share the same count. It also says nothing about size, so a single large block and a small retail fill each add one. The number depends on how the data source defines a trade: feeds that aggregate several fills at the same price into one print report lower counts than tick-by-tick sources, so values are not comparable between providers or between instruments. Any smoothing above 1 introduces lag by construction. Market data comes from your provider and is billed separately from the application, which is also why the same chart can look different on two subscriptions.
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
- Unfinished Auctions — Tape & flow
- Effort vs Result — Tape & flow
- POC Drift (ticks) — Tape & flow
- Cumulative buy volume — Tape & flow
- Cumulative sell volume — Tape & flow
- Buy/sell ratio — Tape & flow
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 is the difference between trade intensity and volume?
- Volume counts contracts or units traded; trade intensity counts how many separate executions produced that volume. One thousand contracts can arrive as ten trades of one hundred or as five hundred trades of two, and only the trade count distinguishes the two cases. Reading the two panes together gives the average size per execution.
- Does a high trade count mean large orders are trading?
- No, and often the opposite. A high count with ordinary volume means the volume was split across many small executions. To estimate execution size, divide the bar's volume by its trade count rather than reading the count alone.
- Why does the same bar show a different trade count on another platform?
- Data feeds differ in how they report executions. Some publish every fill, while others aggregate fills that occur at the same price and moment into a single print, which mechanically lowers the count. Trade intensity reports what the connected source provides, so compare counts within one source rather than across two.