Volume Footprint

A Volume Footprint chart keeps the candles and fills each one with the volume traded at every price level inside it. A regular volume histogram tells you how much traded during a bar; a footprint tells you where inside the bar it traded, and which side was doing it.

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What each cell shows

Every candle is split into price rows, and each row carries the volume that traded at that price:

• Buy and sell volume are shown separately, so you can see which side was more aggressive at a given level.
• Total or Delta — switch what the numbers represent: the total volume traded at a price, or the difference between buying and selling.
• Color intensity follows the volume: the heaviest rows are the brightest, so the concentrations stand out before you read a single number.

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Views

• Clusters — the numbers sit inside each candle, centered in their rows. This is the classic footprint read: exact volumes at every price.
• Profiles — each candle is drawn as a small horizontal histogram. It is easier to scan when you are zoomed out and care about shape rather than exact figures.

You can also choose how the two sides are laid out: sharing one base line at the center of the row, or separated per candle.

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Imbalance

Imbalance highlights the rows where buying and selling are far out of balance, instead of leaving you to compare the two numbers yourself. You set the threshold that counts as an imbalance, choose the colors used for the buy and sell side, and decide whether rows with no volume on one side count as an imbalance or are ignored.

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Key levels and filters

• Value Area — the price range that holds the bulk of a candle’s volume, with its own style and ratio settings, the same idea as the value area on a TPO chart.
• POC difference — an overlay mode that compares the point of control between candles, so you can follow where the heaviest traded price is drifting.
• Threshold filters — recolor rows above a chosen amount of volume, delta, buy, or sell volume, to make only the significant prints stand out. Negative thresholds make sense only in delta mode.
• Row size — how much price one row covers. Smaller rows give a finer footprint; larger rows aggregate the flow into fewer, denser levels.

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How to read it

• Wide or bright rows inside a candle mark the prices where the market did most of its business.
• A lopsided buy/sell split, especially a flagged imbalance, shows which side was leaning on the market at that level.
• Stacked concentrations across neighboring candles are the levels worth watching on a retest — compare them with your support and resistance zones to judge whether a level was defended or absorbed.

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Availability

Volume Footprint needs trade-level data, so it is not available for every instrument — Pepperstone instruments carry no footprints — and it is offered only on the timeframes where a per-candle breakdown is meaningful. Settings, chart sharing, and chart sync work like they do for the other chart types. See also: Chart Types for the full list and how to switch between them.