Value Area Width (ticks) Indicator: Formula, Settings and How to Read It
Value Area Width measures how many ticks separate the value area high from the value area low of a single bar. It quantifies acceptance: a narrow value area means most of the bar's volume fitted into a few ticks, a wide one means the business was spread across many prices.
Senzoukria · Indicators · Updated September 2026
Value Area Width (ticks) ships with the Senzoukria desktop app, in the Volume group of the indicator catalogue. It is drawn in its own panel below the chart.
What Value Area Width (ticks) measures
The value area is built with the canonical Steidlmayer procedure, targeting 70% of the bar's volume by default. Expansion starts at the point of control and advances two ticks at a time; at each step the side whose next pair of ticks holds more volume is the one added, exact ties expand upward following the ATAS convention, and expansion is capped at the profile's real range. Because the walk moves in pairs, the resulting width is an even number of ticks except where the cap truncates it — canonical behaviour rather than an artefact. A bar that traded at a single price gives VAH equal to VAL and a legitimate width of zero. No point is plotted when tick size is unknown, since the walk itself is defined in ticks.
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:
Largeur de la Value Area de la barre, en TICKS : value = VAH − VAL (en indices de tick — soustraction entière exacte) VA = algorithme Steidlmayer canonique (`valueArea`, défaut 70 %) : départ au POC, marche par PAS DE 2 TICKS par côté, le côté au plus gros volume gagne, ÉGALITÉ → UP d'abord (règle ATAS), cap au range réel du profil. POURQUOI : c'est la mesure d'ACCEPTATION de la barre. VA étroite = 70 % du volume tient sur quelques ticks (enchère verrouillée, souvent une barre de balance) ; VA large = le volume s'est étalé (recherche de prix). Comparée au range total, elle sépare les barres à queues (VA étroite, range large) des barres pleines. Convention : marche par 2 ticks ⇒ la largeur est PAIRE sauf cap au range — c'est le comportement canonique, pas un artefact. Une barre à un seul niveau donne VAH = VAL → 0, valeur mesurée légitime (la VA est ce niveau). Tick size inconnu → PAS de point (la marche est définie en ticks).
How to read it
- Narrow readings identify bars where the auction locked onto a small band of prices — the building blocks of a balance area.
- Wide readings identify bars where a broad range of prices was accepted, which accompanies price discovery rather than rotation.
- Compare width with the bar's total range: a narrow value area inside a wide range is the signature of a bar with long tails, where the extremes were visited but not accepted.
- A sequence of narrowing widths describes compression of the accepted prices. It does not indicate which way a subsequent break will go.
- A width of zero is real information, not a failure: the bar traded at one price and the value area is that price.
Parameters and defaults
Value Area % defaults to 70 and can be set between 50 and 95. Lowering it toward 50 tightens the area onto the densest core around the point of control, making widths smaller and more sensitive to the peak. Raising it toward 95 pulls the boundaries out to nearly the full profile, at which point the width mostly tracks the bar's range and stops distinguishing acceptance from travel. Besides the percentage, only the plot color is exposed.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Value Area % | number | 70 | 50 – 95 |
What it does not show
The width describes the shape of one bar's volume distribution and nothing beyond it — it is not a session value area, and stitching per-bar widths together does not approximate one. Bars holding two separate volume clusters are poorly summarised by a single width, because the Steidlmayer walk bridges the thin gap between them. The figure is in ticks, so it is not comparable across instruments and it breaks at contract rolls. It needs complete per-level volume: partial data narrows or widens the area without warning. The two-tick quantisation also makes small widths coarse on instruments with few levels per bar.
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
- Volume — Volume
- Buy/Sell Volume — Volume
- Average Trade Size — Volume
- Volume ROC % — Volume
- Relative Volume — Volume
- Trade Count — Volume
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
- How is the value area calculated for a single bar?
- Starting from the point of control, the algorithm expands two ticks at a time toward whichever side holds more volume in its next pair, until the accumulated volume reaches the target percentage — 70% by default. Exact ties expand upward first, and expansion stops at the bar's real traded range. It is the standard Steidlmayer method applied at bar scale rather than session scale.
- Why is value area width usually an even number of ticks?
- Because the expansion adds two ticks at a time, which is the canonical procedure. The only exception is a walk that reaches the bar's actual traded range and is truncated there, which can leave an odd width. The evenness is expected behaviour, not a rounding error.
- What does a narrow value area on a wide bar mean?
- That the bar's extremes were visited but barely traded: most of the volume was done in a small band and the rest of the range is tail. It is the profile reading of a rejection bar, and it carries more than either the range or the width taken on its own.