Trade Counter
Trade Counter displays the number of individual trade executions per candle, split into buy and sell counts. While most indicators focus on volume (the total size of trades), Trade Counter focuses on the frequency of trades — how many times the market transacted, regardless of the size of each transaction. This distinction is critical: a single 100 BTC market order looks very different from 10,000 orders of 0.01 BTC each, even though the total volume is identical. Trade Counter reveals this difference.How It Works
For each candle, Trade Counter reads the underlying cluster data and counts:- Buy trades: the number of individual executions that occurred at the ask price (aggressive buys)
- Sell trades: the number of individual executions that occurred at the bid price (aggressive sells)
Indicator Type
Subchart — renders in a separate panel below the main price chart with its own Y-axis.Settings
Colors
Display Mode
columns(default): vertical bars anchored to zero. Buy and sell counts rendered side by side. The most common choice for comparing participation.line: continuous line connecting trade count values. Useful when you want to see the trend of trading frequency over time.candles: OHLC representation of trade count. Less common, but useful for spotting intra-bar trade count patterns on higher timeframes.
Anomaly Highlighting
When enabled, bars where the trade count exceeds
mean + (threshold x stddev) are highlighted with a distinct visual marker. A threshold of 3.0 flags only extreme spikes — roughly the top 0.1% of bars.
Gradient Intensity
When enabled, higher trade count bars appear more opaque, while quiet bars fade toward the minimum opacity. This creates a heat-map effect that makes spikes immediately visible without enabling full anomaly detection.
Bar Width
Interpreting Trade Counter
Volume vs. Trade Count Matrix
The most powerful use of Trade Counter is comparing it against total volume. This produces four scenarios:
The “High Volume + Low Trade Count” combination is the signature of institutional activity and is the primary reason to use this indicator.
Algorithmic Detection
High-frequency trading algorithms generate a distinctive pattern: extremely high trade counts with individually small sizes. If Trade Counter shows a sudden spike in frequency that is not accompanied by a proportional volume spike, algorithmic activity is likely.Climactic Exhaustion
At market tops and bottoms, you often see a climactic spike in both volume and trade count, followed by a sharp decline in trade count on the next few bars. This “exhaustion” pattern suggests the move has run out of participants willing to continue in that direction.Combining with Other Indicators
Trade Counter works best alongside:- Bar Statistics — provides the complementary volume breakdown. Trade Counter gives you frequency; Bar Statistics gives you magnitude.
- Delta — when delta is near zero but trade count is high, both sides are actively fighting for control.
- Absorption — absorption events (price stays flat despite heavy volume) become more significant when trade count is also elevated.
- CVD — cumulative delta divergence combined with trade count anomalies can signal exhaustion before price reverses.
Alerts
Trade Counter does not support dedicated alerts. To receive notifications on trade count spikes, enablehighlightAnomalies and use a visual workflow — the highlighted bars will stand out on the chart.
For automated alerting on volume-related extremes, consider using the Delta or Volume indicators which have built-in alert rules.