Net Volume Indicator: Buying vs Selling

What it shows

One line in its own pane under the price, with a grey zero line. The line jumps up when a candle had more buying volume than selling volume and down when selling won. The height shows how lopsided the candle was, in units of volume.

How Pravex works it out

Each candle’s volume is split into an up part (buying) and a down part (selling).
Where the data feed carries taker volume, the split is by the side that took the trade: taker buys lifted the ask and count as up, taker sells hit the bid and count as down. Up is the taker-buy volume, kept between zero and the candle’s total volume, and down is whatever remains.
Where the feed has no taker split, the whole candle’s volume goes to one side by the candle’s direction: a close above the open is all up, a close below the open is all down. A candle that closes at its open follows the move from the previous close, and if that is level too it keeps the side of the candle before it.
Net Volume = up volume − down volume, plotted for every candle.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Read a lower timeframe	off	Shown greyed out and not used. Each candle’s own volume is already split, so Pravex does not scan a lower timeframe and turning it on would change nothing.
Timeframe	1 minute	Shown greyed out for the same reason: no lower timeframe is scanned, so the choice has no effect on the line.

How traders read it

Net Volume works as a measure of who was pushing. A rising price on strongly positive Net Volume says buyers were taking the offers. A rising price on weak or negative Net Volume says the rise came without much aggression, which some read as a move that could fade.

A worked example with made-up numbers: a 1-hour candle trades 100 coins, and 70 of them were taker buys. Net Volume for that candle is 70 − 30 = +40. If the next candle trades the same 100 coins with 35 taker buys, it prints −30. The change of sign from one candle to the next is often the thing to watch.

When it misleads

On this page the data is bitcoin from Hyperliquid, whose candles carry volume but no taker split, so every candle is counted wholly as buying or wholly as selling by its direction. That makes the line a signed version of volume: a candle that closed up but had heavy selling inside it still prints as all buying. On a feed with taker data the line is more accurate, and the split rule stays the same. Net Volume also depends on one venue, so it will not match another venue’s figures.

Questions and answers

What is Net Volume?

Buying volume minus selling volume for one candle. A positive number means buyers were the bigger side, a negative number means sellers were.

How is Net Volume different from Volume Delta?

They answer the same question: how far apart buying and selling volume were. Net Volume draws it as a single line per candle. The Volume Delta page has that indicator’s own drawing and settings.

Why does Net Volume look like volume with a sign?

When the feed has no taker data, Pravex counts the whole candle on one side by its direction, so the size is the candle’s full volume and only the sign carries information.

What does the grey zero line mean?

Above it, buying volume was larger than selling volume in that candle. Under it, selling was larger. On the line, the two were equal.