As you probably already know, Forex uses ticks as an indication of volume, it is in fact a (very) rough approximation of the actual trading volume you get when trading equities or futures. No one really knows how much actual currency changes hands at each tick.
However, why would volume be useless? After all, it is the only non-lagging indicator available to traders apart from the actual exchange rates.
The question of the volume's uselessness (or usefulness) in Forex is one that often incites holy wars in traders' communities. The reason is, it is really difficult to measure its viability as an analytical tool. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that its presumed viability changes from time to time.
One alternative to Forex tick volume often mentioned in discussions is to use the volume in the futures currency market. The issue here is that the foreign exchange market is decentralized, and futures constitute just a minuscule part of the total volume. So, while the FX futures volume may be correlated with the true volume, it isn't much better than drawing strong conclusions from the tick volume.
Nevertheless, to say that the Forex volume is totally useless would be a big overstatement. What tick volume is good for?
- It is sometimes correlated to the "real" volume (which is always unknown). So, it can be used as a substitute for volume in strategies that require this type of data.
- A number of exchange rate changes per unit of time is an interesting indicator in and of itself, regardless of its correlation with the "real" volume. As mentioned earlier, it is non-lagging and can be easily incorporated into technical trading systems.
Lots of successful traders never use tick volume in their trading; lots of others swear by it. Only rigorous backtests of the tick volume as an indicator in volume-based strategies or in a combination with any other indicators will tell you if you can use it profitably.
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