CVD and Delta Volume

Delta Volume and CVD are built-in indicators that read order flow: how much of the traded volume came from buyers hitting the ask and how much from sellers hitting the bid. Delta Volume answers that for every bar; CVD (cumulative volume delta) adds the bars up, so you can see which side has been in control over a session, a week or longer.

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How they are calculated

Every trade on an exchange has a taker — the side that crossed the spread. Both indicators use that side as the exchange reports it, the same trade data behind the Volume Footprint chart:

• Delta for a bar is the volume bought by takers minus the volume sold by takers.
• Nothing is estimated from the shape or direction of the candle.

That is also why the numbers differ from indicators of the same name on platforms that guess the side from lower-timeframe candles. The difference is by design — compare the shape and the turning points, not the absolute values.

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Delta Volume

Delta Volume draws each bar’s delta as a column around a zero level: above zero when takers bought more than they sold, below zero when they sold more, colored by sign. It can also show buy and sell volume as two opposite columns, so you see the size of each side and not only the difference. On the chart and in alert sources it appears as Delta Vol. Reading it:

• A large delta with little price movement means one side was absorbed — aggressive orders met resting liquidity that did not give way.
• Shrinking delta while price keeps going points to exhaustion: the move continues on less and less aggression.

The indicator follows the chart’s timeframe on minute and hour charts; on daily and longer charts it uses daily, weekly or monthly bars.

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CVD

CVD keeps a running total of delta. Each bar adds its delta to the total, and the total starts over from zero when a new period begins. View — how the running total is drawn:

• Line — one value per bar, the total at the bar’s close.
• Candles — every bar is a candle of the running total: it opens where the previous bar closed (at zero after a reset), closes at the new total, and its wicks mark the highest and lowest the total reached inside the bar. Rising candles and falling candles are colored differently.

Reset — when the total starts over:

• None — it never resets and accumulates over the whole loaded history.
• Trading day — at the start of each trading day of the exchange.
• Session — at the start of a session type you choose, on instruments with trading sessions.
• Week or Month — at the start of each calendar week or month, counted in UTC.

Source — what is summed:

• Volume (default) — traded volume, the usual CVD.
• Trades — the number of trades instead of their size, which shows whether the pressure came from many orders or a few large ones.

Reading it:

• Divergence — price makes a new high while CVD does not (or a new low while CVD holds up): the move is happening without matching aggression behind it.
• Trend confirmation — price and CVD rising together means buyers are driving the move, not just lifting thin offers.

Within one reset period, the difference between two neighbouring CVD closes equals that bar’s Delta Volume — the two indicators are the same data at two zoom levels.

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Where they work

Both indicators need trade-side data, so they work where the Volume Footprint chart works: on the instruments footprint data is recorded for, on timeframes of 1 minute and up. They are not available on second or tick charts, and Pepperstone and Exness instruments carry no footprint data.

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Add them to a chart

Open Indicators from the f icon on the chart, search for CVD or Delta, and click the result. Both open in a panel of their own below the price; their settings work like those of any other indicator — see Indicator settings. To get notified on order-flow values, set an alert on Delta Vol — see Alerts on footprint values.