Neglected Volume
The volume most traders overlook - and why it matters most.
Volume is the most honest signal on any chart. Price can be manipulated, squeezed, and pushed in any direction over short periods. But volume reveals participation - who was actually present, how committed they were, and whether the move behind a candle had real conviction or was just noise moving through a thin market.
Neglected Volume was built around a simple observation: most volume indicators measure raw traded quantity. Few ask how that quantity compares to what is normal, whether it is accelerating or decelerating, and whether price and volume are actually telling the same story. This script asks all three.
Relative Volume
The foundation of the indicator. Rather than displaying raw volume bars, Neglected Volume measures each bar's traded activity relative to a long-term average - revealing whether participation is genuinely elevated, suppressed, or unremarkable in context.
Bars exceeding the relative volume threshold are highlighted immediately, separating meaningful activity from background noise. A configurable threshold and lookback length allow the sensitivity to be tuned to any market or timeframe.
Consecutive High-Volume Alert
A single high-volume bar can be an anomaly. Multiple consecutive bars of elevated participation tell a different story - sustained conviction behind a move. The indicator monitors for consecutive bars exceeding the relative volume threshold and fires an alert when the count is reached, flagging potential trading opportunities as they develop rather than after the fact.
OBV Momentum Oscillator
On Balance Volume accumulates volume directionally - adding volume on up bars and subtracting it on down bars. But the raw OBV line is slow and difficult to read in real time. Neglected Volume takes the momentum of OBV - the rate at which buying and selling pressure is changing - and smooths it into a clean oscillator using Least Squares Moving Average.
What this reveals is not just whether buyers or sellers are dominant, but whether that dominance is growing or fading. A price move accompanied by accelerating OBV momentum is very different from the same price move with momentum rolling over.
Momentum Acceleration Band
An optional dynamic envelope wraps around the OBV Momentum oscillator, visualising the acceleration and deceleration of volume momentum directly. Expanding bands indicate that momentum is building - the market is moving with increasing conviction. Contracting bands warn that the move may be running out of energy, even if price continues in the same direction.
Price & OBV Correlation
Markets move in trends when price and volume agree - when rising prices are accompanied by rising participation, or falling prices by increasing selling pressure. When price and volume diverge, the move is suspect.
The Price & OBV Correlation panel displays the rolling correlation between price and On Balance Volume across four reference levels: strong positive, moderate positive, moderate negative, and strong negative. A filled zone between the correlation line and its mirror makes shifts in agreement immediately visible - helping traders distinguish between healthy trending conditions and potential reversals before they fully develop.
OBV Momentum Divergence
Divergence between price and momentum is one of the most reliable early warning signals in technical analysis. When price makes a new high but OBV momentum fails to confirm it, the move may lack the participation needed to sustain. When price makes a new low but OBV momentum holds higher, selling pressure may be exhausting.
Neglected Volume includes a full divergence detection engine built on OBV Momentum rather than a standard oscillator - making the signals more grounded in actual market participation. Regular and hidden divergences on both the bullish and bearish side can be enabled independently, with configurable pivot lookback periods and detection range to match any trading style.
Chaikin Money Flow
An optional overlay of Chaikin Money Flow measures cumulative buying and selling pressure using both price location within the bar and volume - distinguishing between volume that occurred near the high of a candle versus near the low. Scaled using the Phi ratio for consistency with the rest of the indicator's framework.
Volume-Weighted Candle Coloring
Candles are coloured based on relative volume intensity using Fibonacci-derived thresholds. High-conviction up bars - where volume exceeded the average by the Phi ratio - are coloured deep green. High-conviction down bars are dark red. Low-participation moves in either direction are flagged in lighter tones. Standard up and down bars retain conventional coloring when volume is unremarkable.
Lookback length, relative volume threshold, consecutive bar alert count, divergence pivot periods, and all visual components are independently configurable. OBV Momentum smoothing, Momentum Acceleration Band, Chaikin Money Flow, Correlation panel, divergence signals, and candle coloring can each be toggled on or off to build a clean, focused view suited to any workflow.
