Net Volume: signed volume per bar, without accumulation
How net volume separates buying from selling volume on each bar, and why it is more honest than the cumulative alternatives.
Net Volume is free on Basis — the button opens a live crypto chart with it already applied. No account, no trial and no limit on how many indicators you add.
Open the chartWhat it measures
Net volume is buying volume minus selling volume for each bar, plotted as a histogram around zero rather than accumulated into a running line.
Because it does not accumulate, it has no dependence on where the calculation started, which is the single biggest practical advantage over On Balance Volume and Price Volume Trend.
Each bar stands alone, and what you see is exactly what happened in that bar.
How it is calculated
These are the steps Basis performs, verified against the published definition.
- 1
Determine the buying and selling volume for the bar. Where trade data is available this is the actual aggressor split; otherwise it is estimated from where the close sat within the range.
- 2
Subtract selling from buying.
- 3
Plot the result as a histogram around zero.
How to read it
- Large positive bars are aggressive buying and large negative bars aggressive selling, on that bar specifically.
- A price advance made of small positive bars is a different event from one made of a few enormous ones, and only an unaccumulated view shows that.
- Consecutive same-signed bars matter more than any single one.
- It pairs naturally with a footprint chart, which is the same information at a finer resolution.
- It is the natural companion to cumulative delta. The cumulative line shows the trend of flow and hides which bars produced it; the histogram shows exactly which bars produced it and hides the trend. Reading them together is how order-flow traders actually work.
Where it misleads
Whether this is a measurement or an estimate depends entirely on the data source. With real trade data the split is exact — each trade has an aggressor side. Without it, the split is inferred from the close position within the bar, which is a guess that can be badly wrong on a bar that reversed hard. Basis uses actual trade data where the exchange provides it, and the distinction is worth knowing because the two produce genuinely different histograms.
Plot Net Volume on a live chart
Basis is free. Every indicator, every chart type, order flow, derivatives, screening and backtesting — no paid tier and no account needed to open a chart.
Open a chart with NVOLRelated indicators
Updated 2026-08-22 · Educational reference, not financial advice.