Trading & Markets
Volume
The number of contracts traded in a period. Confirms conviction behind moves and marks the prices where the most business was done.
In plain English
Every futures trade prints volume, and its distribution is information: breakouts on heavy volume carry conviction, drifts on thin volume invite reversal, and high-volume price shelves become future support and resistance.
Volume tools dominate futures trading: volume profile maps it by price, VWAP weights average price by it, and order flow reads it in real time. Since futures volume is centralized at the exchange (unlike fragmented equities), the numbers are clean and trusted.
- NQ breaks its range high on triple the average per-minute volume: conviction.
- The same break on a quiet tape would invite a fade.