BetterVolumeZScore

Product name: BetterVolume ZScore V2 Type: Indicator / Volume Suggested price: 30 USD (MQL5 minimum) — raise later with version updates

English description

BetterVolume ZScore V2 is a tick-volume indicator that classifies each bar by what happened in it, not just by how much volume it had.

Standard volume histograms show one thing: high or low. This indicator adds a second measurement — movement efficiency (bar range ÷ tick count) — and compares it with activity. The mismatch between the two tells you whether a bar moved because of participation, despite participation, or without participation.

The indicator is a display tool. It does not generate buy/sell signals, arrows or alerts.

What it separates

A tall volume bar can be three different things:

• Climax — many ticks, wide range. Price moved with participation. (Red = up bar, Blue = down bar)
• Absorption — many ticks, narrow range. Price tried to move and could not. (Gold)
• Vacuum — few ticks, wide range. Price slid through an empty book. (White on dark charts, Black on light charts)

Ordinary bars are drawn in muted grey so that only the bars that matter carry color.

How it decides

All judgments use log Z-scores over a rolling window (default 20 bars), not "X times the average". A quiet Asian session and a volatile New York session are measured on the same scale: how far this bar is from its own recent distribution.

Marks

• ● above a bar — statistically extreme activity (Z ≥ 2.5). Kept even when display compression shrinks the bar.
• × red — price approached upward with momentum, then activity vanished and the bar stopped.
• × blue — the same after a downward approach.

× marks the place where a push was interrupted. It is a punctuation mark, not a direction call. The threshold is calibrated automatically per symbol from the last 5,000 bars (default: top 2% of drop scores), so the frequency is the same on Gold, indices or crypto.

Optional layers (off by default)

• Wall lines — draws dashed horizontal lines on the price chart at the price of × marks from a higher timeframe (default H4). Lines are labeled "BVLine" and removed when broken by a close.
• Divergence lines — price makes a higher high (lower low) while tick count is lower than at the previous pivot.
• Divergence zones — price makes a higher high (lower low) while the move was more vacuum-like than the previous one (efficiency ratio ≥ 1.25).
• Wall ledger — tracks each × through retest: held (○) or broken (× fades).

Display

• Draws with candle-style bars, so columns follow chart zoom with no gaps.
• Height is compressed (square root, capped at 5× mean) so one news spike does not flatten the rest of the window. The ● mark preserves the information that the bar was extreme.
• Automatic dark / light theme from the chart background; manual override available.
• Bar-close countdown in the sub-window corner.

Classic mode

The original Better Volume 6-state classification is included as Classic mode for users who prefer it.

Notes

• Forex volume in MetaTrader is tick volume (number of price updates), not traded volume. Values differ by broker.
• Displayed bar heights are compressed; the vertical scale is relative, not an absolute count.
• On thin symbols or sessions the classification can become sensitive. Increase the calculation period if needed.
• Works on any symbol and timeframe.

Main inputs