← Reading the Chart · lesson 3 of 10
By the end of this one you'll know what those bars at the bottom of a chart count and why a price move means more when a big crowd made it.
Volume is the count of how much of a thing actually got bought and sold during one candle's window of time. It sits at the bottom of the chart as little bars, one bar under each candle, and it answers one simple question: how many hands did this change? Picture the farmers market. If I raise my egg price and the whole county still lines up to buy, that price is real, the crowd agreed to it. If I raise my price and one cousin buys a single dozen out of pity, the sign shows the same number but it hardly means a thing. Price is the sign on my table, and volume is the line of people in front of it. Chart readers look at both, because a move made by a big crowd tells a very different story than the same move made in an empty market.
Same lesson, told by a hundred dollar bill. Tap to walk it one step at a time.
In this example, a tiny coin jumps from $100 to $110, but the volume bars show only about $800 traded the entire day, so just a few small trades pushed it there.
That same week, a bigger coin moves from $100 to $103 with $5 million traded, thousands of people agreeing on each price along the way.
The $10 move came out of a nearly empty market, and the $3 move came from a real crowd.
Volume is how you tell those two stories apart.
The cousin group chat is on fire: some tiny coin jumped 20% today and everybody is typing rocket emojis. You look it up, and the price really did jump, but the little bars along the bottom of the chart are nearly flat.
Pick your move. Then peek at the other roads if you're curious.
Volume counts how much actually changed hands, and a price move made in a nearly empty market is a much thinner story than the same move made by a crowd.