Volume Zones

Every block of volume — a few bars wide, a few price rows tall — that is much heavier than the market's usual, drawn once where it formed as a bubble.

Every block of volume — a few columns wide, a few price rows tall — that is much heavier than the market's usual best block, drawn once where it formed as a bubble: the heavier the block the bigger the bubble, green when aggressive buyers took more of it and red when sellers did. Unlike Key Levels it does not wait for price to turn.

Candles: 1m, 5m, 15m, 1h
Footprint: 1m, 5m, 15m, 1h
Heatmap: any range
Not drawn on: Renko, Range bars, Line break — This chart type has no time axis, so order-flow indicators cannot be plotted on it
Needs: the instrument's price grid — without it the chart shows: “Instrument tick unknown — this indicator needs the exchange price grid”
Alerts: yes

What it shows

A zone is a block of volume a few bars wide and a few price rows tall that is clearly heavier than the market's usual best block. Volume Zones draws every such block once, as a bubble at the middle of the block with its volume printed inside in coin units when it fits, and it does not carry it to the right.

The bubble's area follows the volume: a block twice as heavy has twice the area. Sizes are measured against the heaviest zone the panel holds, so they do not change as you scroll.

The bubble sits where the volume in the block sat, not at the middle of the rectangle: it is centred on the average of the block's cells weighted by their volume, so on a footprint panel it lands on the heavy cells. If the volume cannot be reproduced from the columns TapeHawk holds, the bubble goes at the middle of the block instead.

The bubble's colour is who won the block. It is green when aggressive buyers took more of the volume in it than aggressive sellers, and red when sellers did. That is a fact about who traded, not a prediction: a green zone does not say price will rise.

It asks for nothing else. Unlike Key Levels it does not wait for price to turn, so it shows the places where volume piled up whether or not price reversed there. A run of heavy blocks that overlap in time and price is one zone, reported at the first bar of the run — the moment it was knowable. Its colour is taken from the block as first seen.

How to read it

A heavy zone is a place where a lot of volume changed hands in a few bars. What price did next is the evidence: a turn there makes it a level worth watching, a run straight through says the volume was absorbed.
A green or red zone says which side was the aggressor in that block. A heavy red zone at the low of a drop with price turning up afterwards is selling that was absorbed.
A zone has no end. It is a record of where the volume was, not a prediction that price will return.
Next to Key Levels, the two use the same block, so a zone and a level that coincide are the same volume seen with and without the turn.

Parameters

Setting	Control	What it does
Box width (bars)	Number	Range and default are set by TapeHawk; the settings dialog shows them.
Box height (rows)	Number	Range and default are set by TapeHawk; the settings dialog shows them.
Heavier than usual by	Number	Range and default are set by TapeHawk; the settings dialog shows them.
Max marks / minute	Number	How many zones a minute may raise an alert. It bounds notifications only — every zone the rule finds is still drawn. 1–60 · default 20
Buying colour	Colour
Selling colour	Colour

Box width (bars) and Box height (rows) are the size of the volume block, in bars and in price rows. A row is half of the market's typical bar range, measured as it goes.

Heavier than usual by is how much heavier than the market's usual best block a box has to be. With no turn to filter on, the weight is the only filter, so the default is higher here than for Key Levels.

Max marks / minute concerns only alerts; it never limits the drawing.

Alerts

The Alert tab has one signal, zone. Switch it on and TapeHawk tells you when a heavy block of volume has formed, with its price range. The rule watches bars of the panel's timeframe, so switch it on from a panel at the timeframe you want. It uses the settings on the Parameters tab at the moment you switch it on; if you change them later, the tab offers to bring the alert along. Alerts need a confirmed account; Signal alerts covers the rest.

The alert engine reads each bar as it closes and does not replay history. After it restarts it has to read a few hours of bars before it can measure the market's usual range, and until then it announces no zones — the chart, which is rebuilt from the recorded history, is not affected.

Limitations

It is drawn at 1m, 5m, 15m and 1h, and needs the symbol's price steps; until the panel has them its row in the menu says (no price grid).
A zone is found on closed bars, so the bar still forming has none yet.
It reaches back 24 hours on a symbol TapeHawk records, and about half an hour on a live-only symbol.
A bubble too small to hold its figure prints none, rather than a clipped one; zoom in to read it.
On a footprint panel the bubble is drawn over the cells, with its figure on a small dark plate so the cell numbers behind do not run through it. The ring itself is see-through, so the cells inside it stay readable.
A busy market can have many zones on one panel; raise Heavier than usual by to keep only the heaviest.