Volume and Open Interest
Volume is the total number of contracts traded for each day. For weekly and monthly data, the volume figures are the average daily value.
Open Interest applies to futures contracts only, and is the total number of outstanding contracts. Open interest is represented by the horizontal line above the volume on the bottom of the chart.
Official volume figures for futures data is not normally transmitted until the next day, and Open Interest is not available during the current day's session. This is why final volume and open interest prices are always a day behind.
End of day volume can differ from minute bar volume. Charts that utilize a period of "Daily" will show a different quantity of Volume when compared to charts that utilize an "Intraday" period, like 1 minute. This is caused by the fact that certain types of trades, such as block trades, spread trades and market trades, are considered by the exchange when reporting the cumulative daily volume for a specific symbol or contract. However, those trades are not represented in the tick or 1-minute intraday data for the symbol. These trades together make up the difference observed between the daily volume and the sum of the intraday volume.
On an Interactive Chart, Volume is added to the Main Pane by default, but can be added to its own pane if desired. You may also specify different colors for the volume bars. Coloring of the volume bars help you quickly determine whether the symbol's bar was positive (green volume bar), negative (red volume bar), or unchanged (blue volume bar).
Sample Chart:
Parameters
The parameter "Bar Coloring" for Volume can be set to these options:
- Apply to (Main Pane) - by default, the study is applied to the same pane as the underlying symbol. You may also add it to its own New Pane.
- Volume Type (Contract) - this parameter appears when Volume is added to a futures chart. See below.
- Bar Coloring (LikeMain) - volume bars are colored to match the symbol's price change. This can either follow the coloring of the bar type of the symbol (LikeMain), OpenToClose, or CloseToClose
- Precision (Auto) - the number of decimals for the study
When this study is added to a futures contract, the parameter "Volume Type" appears, and determines how the study grabs symbol volume, either contract or total. For aggregates such as daily, weekly, monthly, this returns the average volume for the period specified.
- Contract - this is the default setting used when an Intraday, Daily, Weekly, Monthly ot Quarterly aggregation is selected. This returns contract-specific volume for the symbol entered on the chart.
- Total - this is the default setting when any "Nearby" aggregation is selected for the chart (chart shows a combination of contracts, so it will return the volume for all open contracts for the root symbol.)