Lesson 6 of 8 · 9 min
Volume and tick volume in forex
Why spot forex has no central volume figure, what tick volume counts instead, and how the session clock, news and your broker's feed limit what it can tell you.
By the end you'll be able to
- Explain why spot forex has no central volume figure
- Describe what tick volume counts and why it roughly follows activity
- Name the limits of tick volume, from broker feeds to the session clock and news
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On a stock chart, volume is the number of shares that changed hands. Your forex platform shows a volume panel too, but nobody can tell you how many euros changed hands in the last hour.
What the volume panel counts
Illustrative EUR/USD H1 prices over two days, UK time. Tick counts are made up for teaching; real feeds differ by broker.
Spot forex is traded over the counter: banks, other dealers, electronic trading venues and brokers deal with each other directly, and no single exchange records every trade. The Bank for International Settlements estimates total turnover from a survey every three years; its April 2025 survey put it at about $9.6 trillion a day across all currencies and products. Nobody publishes that figure hour by hour.
So the “volume” on a forex chart is usually tick volume: the number of times your broker’s price changed during the candle. More trading tends to move the quote more often, so tick volume rises and falls broadly with activity. It counts price updates, though, not money. One tick can be a large trade or a tiny one.
Currency futures, such as the euro contract on the CME, do report real exchange volume. That volume covers only futures traded on that exchange, a slice of the whole market, but it is a public figure you can check.
Four limits
- It belongs to your broker. Each broker’s feed counts its own ticks. Switch between the two feeds on the chart: the shape is similar, but feed B counts about 40% fewer ticks for the same candles.
- It follows the clock. Tick volume climbs at the London open and peaks in the London–New York overlap almost every day, whatever price is doing.
- News inflates it. Around a release, quotes update many times a second and spreads widen, so ticks spike without telling you who is buying.
- Quiet hours mislead. A move during the Asian session on low tick volume, like the day-two dip on the chart, is easy to push and easy to reverse.
Illustrative tick counts. Your broker’s numbers will differ.
What tick volume cannot do
It cannot show who is buying and who is selling, how large the trades were, or whether “big money” is behind a move. Claims that a tick-volume pattern reveals what banks are doing go further than the data allows. At most, it tells you whether your broker’s price was busy or quiet compared with the same time on other days.
Try it
Typical activity by hour (illustrative)
Northern summer hours (UK on BST). In the UK winter the Asian sessions start about an hour earlier in UK time.
When each pair is usually busy, in UK time. An illustrative model of typical activity, not live data; news can make any hour busy.
Slide the hour from 04:00 to 15:00 UK and watch EUR/USD go from quiet to very busy. Tick volume follows the same daily pattern, which is why you compare a candle with the same hour on other days rather than with the hour before.
Quick check
Quick check
Question 1 of 4
Why does spot forex have no central volume figure?
Question 2 of 4
What does tick volume count?
Question 3 of 4
A 14:00 UK candle shows twice the tick volume of the 04:00 candle. What is the most likely reason?
Question 4 of 4
Your broker and a friend's show different tick volume for the same candle. Who is right?
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