Volume, anchors and confluence
Tick volume, VWAP, Fibonacci — and why three agreeing indicators can be one fact.
Say what the volume under a spot gold or FX chart actually counts, read a climax bar and a volume profile as records of activity, compute a VWAP by hand from an anchor, and draw Fibonacci retracements while knowing they are a convention that depends on the swing chosen. Then sort any stack of indicators by what each one is computed from, and stop counting the same closes as separate evidence.
5 chapters · 6 quiz questions · 13 terms · included with a plan
Otus, on this module
By now you can compute every indicator in this part by hand. Here is the payoff: once you know what each one is made of, you can see that most of them are made of the same thing. Four indicators agreeing on a chart is usually one fact about the closes, reported four times. Learning to count that as one is worth more than any indicator in the part.
The chapters
Each module ends with you doing what it taught — a written answer Otus reads, and a quiz.
- 01 · Read
What the volume bar counts
Tick volume on spot gold and FX, a climax bar, and volume by price.
- 02 · Read
Anchored numbers: VWAP and Fibonacci
Two tools that start from a chosen point — one weighted by volume, one by convention.
- 03 · Read
Confluence, and counting the same fact twice
Sort indicators by what they are made of before letting them agree.
- 04 · Watch
Watch: Indicator Confluence
One minute, then the step ticks itself.
- 05 · Write
In your own words
Three or four sentences. Otus reads them.
- 06 · Quiz
Six questions
A wrong answer still pays. It costs the combo, not the XP.
13 terms this module defines
The same definitions Otus uses in the lessons. All of them are in the trading glossary.
- Tick volume
- A count of price updates in a period on one broker's feed. What most spot gold and FX charts show as volume, because over-the-counter markets have no central record of trades.
- Exchange volume
- The number of contracts actually traded, counted by the exchange — as on gold futures. Spot markets have nothing equivalent, only each feed's own activity count.
- Climax volume
- An unusually busy, usually wide bar at the end of an extended move. Commonly read as exhaustion; the bar records activity and range, never whose orders they were.
- Volume profile
- Volume shown per price over a chosen stretch, instead of per bar. Shows where trading concentrated — on spot gold, where the ticks concentrated.
- Point of control
- The single busiest price band in a volume profile. A record of where most activity happened in the chosen stretch, which changes if the stretch changes.
- Value area
- The range around the point of control holding about 70% of the profile's volume. The 70% is a convention, not a law.
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price: the sum of price times volume divided by total volume, from an anchor such as the session start. The average price where the activity actually was.
- Anchored VWAP
- A VWAP whose count starts at a point someone chose — a swing low, a release. A different anchor gives a different line, so the anchor is part of the reading.
- Fibonacci retracement
- Lines at 23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8% and 78.6% of a chosen swing. A widely drawn convention; nothing in the market is derived from the sequence, and 50% is not a Fibonacci ratio.
- The chosen swing
- Retracement levels depend entirely on which low and high are picked. A different swing gives five different lines, so a level needs its swing named.
- Indicator confluence
- Several indicators pointing at the same reading. Worth something only in proportion to how many genuinely different inputs they are built from.
- Independent inputs
- Evidence from different sources — a level's history, the time of day, a scheduled release, volume, structure. Describe a chart once per input, not once per indicator.
Finishing it pays 150 XP and 3 keys on the game board, on top of what each chapter earns. XP measures what you learned — never what you earned. How levels work.
Education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything; the school teaches reading charts, never predictions.
Start with lesson one.
The first modules, Otus as your tutor and the game board are free. No card needed.