Why forex has no real volume in the first place
The foreign exchange market is the largest market in the world. According to the BIS Triennial Survey, global OTC foreign exchange turnover averaged $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, up 28% from $7.5 trillion in 2022. Spot trading alone was $3.0 trillion a day.
But none of that goes through a single exchange. Forex is an over-the-counter market: a network of banks, brokers, and liquidity providers dealing directly with each other. When you buy EUR/USD, that trade is recorded by your broker and its liquidity providers, and nowhere else.
Compare that to a stock exchange, where every share traded passes through one venue and gets reported to one tape. A stock’s volume figure is a fact. A forex pair’s volume figure is an estimate from one participant’s corner of the market.
So when MT5 displays a volume histogram under your EUR/USD chart, it is showing you something else entirely.
What tick volume actually measures?
Tick volume counts price updates. Every time the price your broker quotes changes, that’s one tick. A candle with 400 ticks had 400 price changes during its formation. A candle with 40 ticks had 40.
It’s a measure of activity, not size. Three important limitations follow from that:
- Trade size is ignored. A $500 trade and a $50 million trade each move the count by one, assuming each causes a quote change.
- Trades inside the spread are invisible. Large trades that don’t move the quoted price generate no tick.
- Brokers differ. Each broker uses its own liquidity providers, so tick volume for the same pair at the same minute can differ noticeably between platforms.
That third point matters more than most traders realize. It means tick volume figures are not comparable across brokers, and any strategy with a hard-coded threshold ("enter when volume exceeds 500") is tuned to one data feed, not to the market.
Some traders claim tick volume tracks real volume almost perfectly. Be careful with that claim; comparisons between platform tick volume and CME currency futures volume often show a much weaker relationship than the claim suggests. The honest position is this: tick volume is a reasonable proxy for how active the market is, and a poor proxy for how much was traded.
That’s not a reason to ignore it. It’s a reason to use it for the right job.
What tick volume is genuinely good for?
Because it measures activity, tick volume answers one question well: is this move happening while the market is paying attention or while it’s asleep?
That question is worth asking at four specific moments.
1. Breakout confirmation. Price breaks a level you’ve been watching. If the breakout candle and the ones following it show clearly higher tick volume than the preceding candles, more participants are engaged in that move. If the break happens on tick volume no higher than the quiet range that preceded it, fewer participants are involved, and the break has a weaker basis. This doesn’t tell you the break will fail. It tells you how much agreement is behind it.
2. Divergence between price and activity. A trend making new highs while tick volume steadily declines shows price advancing on thinning participation. Momentum traders treat this as a warning that the move is running out of fuel. It’s a signal to tighten risk management, not a reversal signal on its own.
3. Exhaustion spikes. A very large tick volume spike at the end of an extended move often marks the point where the last participants enter and the move stalls. Common at the climax of a strong trend and frequently seen right after major data releases.
4. Quiet retests. After a strong, high-activity move, price often drifts back toward the breakout level on much lower tick volume. Low activity on the pullback suggests little conviction behind it.
Notice what all four have in common: every one is a comparison, not an absolute number. That’s the correct way to use tick volume. Never "volume is high." Always "volume is high relative to the last 20 candles on this pair at this time of day."
Compare like with like: the session problem
Forex activity follows a daily rhythm, and ignoring it is the single most common volume mistake.
| Session | Approximate hours (UTC) | Typical activity |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney / Tokyo | 22:00 – 08:00 | Lower; active for AUD, NZD, JPY |
| London | 08:00 – 17:00 | High; the largest FX centre |
| London / New York overlap | 13:00 – 17:00 | Highest of the day |
| New York (after London closes) | 17:00 – 22:00 | Falling through the afternoon |
ABET’s platform quotes times in GMT+2, so convert accordingly.
A EUR/USD candle at 14:00 UTC will almost always show far more ticks than one at 02:00 UTC. That tells you nothing about conviction it tells you London and New York are both open.
The fix is straightforward: compare a candle only to recent candles from the same session, ideally the same time on previous days. A Tuesday 09:00 candle is compared against previous Tuesday and Monday 09:00 candles, not against Friday evening.
This is also why volume analysis works better on intraday charts than on daily charts. Daily candles average the whole rhythm away.
| Hour (GMT) | Hour (PKT) | Session | Avg ticks per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | 05:00 | Tokyo open | 2,495 |
| 01:00 | 06:00 | Tokyo | 2,663 |
| 02:00 | 07:00 | Tokyo | 2,037 |
| 03:00 | 08:00 | Tokyo | 1,755 |
| 04:00 | 09:00 | Tokyo | 1,556 |
| 05:00 | 10:00 | Tokyo / pre-London | 1,944 |
| 06:00 | 11:00 | Frankfurt open | 3,094 |
| 07:00 | 12:00 | London open | 3,313 |
| 08:00 | 13:00 | London | 3,443 |
| 09:00 | 14:00 | London | 2,946 |
| 10:00 | 15:00 | London | 2,567 |
| 11:00 | 16:00 | London | 3,001 |
| 12:00 | 17:00 | London–New York overlap | 4,274 |
| 13:00 | 18:00 | London–New York overlap | 4,926 |
| 14:00 | 19:00 | London–New York overlap (peak) | 5,173 |
| 15:00 | 20:00 | London–New York overlap | 4,237 |
| 16:00 | 21:00 | New York | 3,002 |
| 17:00 | 22:00 | New York | 2,529 |
| 18:00 | 23:00 | New York | 2,510 |
| 19:00 | 00:00 | New York | 2,301 |
| 20:00 | 01:00 | New York close | 1,096 |
| 21:00 | 02:00 | Daily rollover (lowest) | 372 |
| 22:00 | 03:00 | Sydney | 876 |
| 23:00 | 04:00 | Sydney | 976 |
Where to find real volume when you need it
Tick volume has limits. When a decision matters, three sources give you actual traded volume or actual positioning.
1. CME currency futures volume. Currency futures trade on an exchange, so their volume figures are real and centrally reported. EUR/USD futures volume is a genuine window into institutional activity in the euro. Many traders watch futures volume alongside their spot chart for confirmation.
2. The COT report. The CFTC publishes the Commitments of Traders report every Friday at 3:30 pm Eastern time, showing positions as of the preceding Tuesday. It breaks positions into commercial holdings (hedgers) and non-commercial holdings (typically speculators). Two things to keep in mind: the data is three days old when released, and it covers futures positions, not the whole spot market. It’s a positioning gauge, not a timing tool. Extreme non-commercial positioning in one direction has historically been of interest to traders watching for crowded trades.
3. Exchange-traded instruments. If you also trade index or commodity CFDs, those track instruments that have real, centrally reported volume. Volume analysis is simply more reliable there than in spot forex, which is worth remembering when you’re deciding where to apply these techniques.
Five mistakes worth avoiding
- Treating tick volume as money traded. It’s a count of price changes. Everything else follows from getting this right.
- Using fixed numeric thresholds. A "high volume" number on one broker’s feed is meaningless on another’s. Use relative comparisons, or a moving average of volume as your baseline.
- Comparing across sessions. Covered above, and the most frequent error.
- Trading volume signals alone. Volume is a confirmation tool. It answers "how much conviction is behind this?" not "which direction?" It works alongside structure, levels, and trend, not instead of them.
- Ignoring news timing. A volume spike at 13:30 UTC on the first Friday of the month is US payrolls, not a technical signal. Check the economic calendar before interpreting any spike.
A simple way to start
You don’t need a new indicator suite. Try this for two weeks:
- Add the standard Volumes indicator to a 15-minute chart of one major pair. In MT5, Insert → Indicators → Volumes.
- Add a 20-period moving average to the volume histogram so you have a visual baseline instead of eyeballing it.
- Mark the London open and the London/New York overlap on your chart, so you always know which session you’re reading.
- For every setup you were going to take anyway, note whether tick volume was above or below its 20-period average, and record it in your journal.
- After two weeks, review. You’re not looking for a system. You’re looking for whether volume context would have changed your decision on any of those trades.
That last step is the point. Volume analysis is most valuable as a filter on trades you were already considering a reason to size down, wait for a retest, or skip a setup entirely.
Does forex have real volume data?
Not in the way stocks do. Forex is an over-the-counter market with no central exchange, so no complete record of traded volume exists. The volume shown on MT5 is tick volume, which counts price updates rather than amounts traded. Real volume is available for exchange-traded currency futures.
What is tick volume in MT5?
Tick volume is the number of times the price changed during a candle’s formation. A candle with 300 ticks saw 300 price updates. It measures market activity, not the size of the trades.
Is tick volume reliable?
It’s reliable as a relative measure of activity on your own broker’s feed, and unreliable as a measure of how much was traded. Comparisons between platform tick volume and exchange futures volume often show a weaker relationship than commonly claimed. Compare tick volume to recent candles from the same session rather than treating it as an absolute figure.
What is the best volume indicator for forex?
The standard Volumes indicator built into MT5 is sufficient for most traders, especially with a moving average applied to give a baseline. More complex volume indicators still rest on the same tick data, so they inherit the same limitations.
When is forex volume highest?
During the London and New York overlap, roughly 13:00–17:00 UTC, when the two largest trading centres are open at the same time.
See it on a live chart. You can test volume analysis on a free 30-day ABET demo account, with live prices on MetaTrader 5 and no money at risk. Open a demo account: https://secure.abetglobal.com/account/register
Risk warning: CFDs and leveraged forex are complex instruments and carry a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. This article is educational and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any instrument. No analysis technique, including volume analysis, can predict market direction or guarantee results.