Volume confirmation lab
See why volume is the only thing that separates a breakout somebody is behind from one that is about to fail.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere. Educational only, and not investment advice.
How to use this calculator
Each step names a control you will find on screen above.
- Look at the two breakouts in price only
Cover the volume panel mentally. The two price moves look nearly identical — same shape, same size, same clean break of the level.
- Now read the volume beneath each
One broke out on a large volume spike. The other broke out on volume no higher than an average day.
- Compare each against the recent average
Absolute volume is meaningless across stocks. What matters is the ratio to this stock’s own recent average — twice normal is significant, ten per cent above is not.
- Follow what happened next
The low-volume breakout returned inside the range. That is the usual outcome, and it is why the confirmation step exists.
Worked example: Two identical breakouts, one real
Both breaks clear the same resistance level by the same amount on the same size of candle.
What to enter
- Compare
- Breakout A vs Breakout B
What it shows you
- Breakout A — price
- Clears the level cleanly
- Breakout A — volume
- ≈ 3× the 20-day average
- Breakout B — price
- Clears the level cleanly
- Breakout B — volume
- ≈ average
- What followed A
- Continuation
- What followed B
- Back inside the range within days
Where this is taught
A calculator gives you a number. These explain what the number means and when it misleads you.
- Technical Analysis12 minThe Wyckoff methodA century-old framework for reading accumulation and distribution — and the one part of it, the spring, that is genuinely useful.
- Technical Analysis12 minEffort versus resultVolume is effort and the candle range is the result. When they disagree, someone large is on the other side — which is the entire idea behind volume spread analysis.
- Technical Analysis9 minVolume: the only independent confirmation you havePrice can be moved by a handful of orders. Volume tells you how many people actually meant it.
- Technical Analysis12 minThe wrong bars to compare againstYour alert fires on “volume more than three times the twenty-bar average”, and it fires every single morning on roughly the same forty stocks. The filter is not finding unusual participation. On an intraday chart it is finding the time of day, and the fix is to change the denominator rather than the threshold.
- Technical Analysis12 minMoney flow: when turnover disagrees with priceRSI asks whether it went up. Money flow asks whether money followed it up. The divergence between the two is worth more than either reading alone.