Volume

Volume is the number of contracts that traded. In futures, every contract that trades has a buyer and a seller, so volume doesn't tell you "more buyers than sellers." It tells you how much business was done.

What volume can tell you

• Participation. High volume at a price means many participants were willing to trade there. Low volume means few were.
• Acceptance vs rejection. Price moving to a new level with volume suggests acceptance. Price moving there without volume, then leaving, suggests rejection.
• Effort vs result. A huge volume bar with little price movement means a lot of effort produced no result — often a sign that someone is absorbing the aggression.

What volume can't tell you

• Direction on its own. A volume spike happens at tops, at bottoms, and in the middle of moves.
• Who is "smart." Big volume isn't automatically institutional, and institutional volume isn't automatically right.
• What happens next. Volume describes what already traded.

Two views of the same data

The volume bars under a chart show volume over time — how much traded in each candle.

A volume profile turns that sideways and shows volume at each price — how much traded at 5,000.00, at 5,000.25, and so on, over a session or any range you choose. That's the view that reveals where the market accepted price and where it didn't, and it's the backbone of the Utopia method.

Context matters

Volume is always relative. The first minutes of the US session trade far more than the middle of the overnight session. Compare volume to what's normal for that time of day, not to the bar next to it.