Charting and Studies User Guide - CQG.com

Volume and Open Interest (VolOI)
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Either the Tick Volume or Actual Volume will appear when Volume & Open Interest is requested.
Tick Volume
Tick Volume is available for most charts and appears when the Actual Volume is not available.
Tick Volume displays the number of price changes that occurred during a specified time period.
Example: The Tick Volume for a 15 Minute Bar would be 50 if the price of the displayed
Contract changed 50 times during the 15-minute period that constituted the bar.
Actual Volume
The study automatically reports Actual Volume, instead of Tick Volume, when Actual Volume is
available. Actual Volume represents the Total Volume for all currently traded contracts, not the
Contract Specific Volume. Actual Total Volume is updated automatically when the volume
information becomes available from the exchanges. The exchanges transmit volume
information at different times.
Open Interest
Open Interest displays the number of contracts that are not closed or delivered for a given day.
The Open Interest that appears is the Total Open Interest for all currently traded contracts, not
the Contract Specific Open Interest. Open Interest is updated when the volume and open
interest information becomes available from the exchanges. Exchanges transmit volume and
open interest information at different times.
Interpretation
Volume is used as a qualifier when interpreting patterns and other technical indicators. High
volume events give more importance to underlying activity. Divergences between price action
and volume are often used to predict future price activity. Volume is useful in identifying tops
and bottoms of trends. An uptrend that shows volume trending lower may predict its conclusion
while a downtrend with waning volume and high volume event(s) may predict a reversal. In the
chart above during the uptrend Open Interest is declining predicting the end of the trend.
Charting and Studies User Guide