Many beginners read a tall green bar under a price chart as "buyers beat sellers". Others assume every trade is counted twice, once for each side. Both are wrong. Volume in stock market is the number of shares that changed hands in a set period, such as one day. Read correctly, it shows how much activity sits behind a price move.
What is Volume in Share Market?
Volume in share market counts shares traded. How many people or orders were involved does not matter. Every trade has one buyer and one seller, and the exchange records its quantity once.
Here is how a day's count builds:
• You buy 500 shares from a seller. Volume: 500.
• Later, you sell those 500 shares to another investor. Volume: 1,000.
The same 500 shares count twice only because they changed hands in two separate trades. Within one trade, the buy and sell sides are never added together.
NSE reports volume as Total Traded Quantity. Turnover is different: it is the rupee value traded, or volume × price. Higher volume generally points to easier entry and exit, the idea behind stock market liquidity.
What is Volume in Trading Charts? How to Read the Bars
On most charts, volume sits as vertical bars below the price, one per period, such as a session. Taller bars mean more shares traded.
Colour is where most beginners slip. A green or red bar only records which way the price closed. TradingView can colour a bar by whether the period closed above its own open, or above the previous period's close. Switch the setting and the same bar can change colour. Neither version measures buyers against sellers.
NSE publishes daily volume for every listed stock. Inside an Indiabulls Securities account, TradingView charts place volume bars under the price candles, useful when you study candlestick patterns.
Also Read: To understand how different chart formats help interpret price movements, explore the Types of Charts Used in Technical Analysis.
What Does Volume Mean in Stocks? Reading Price and Volume Together
Volume alone tells you how busy a stock was. So what does volume mean in stocks once you add price? The pair hints at the conviction behind a move, though it cannot predict the next one.
Price | Volume | What it may suggest |
Rising | High | Wide participation behind the rise |
Rising | Low | Few participants, so the rise may lack support |
Falling | High | Many participants accepting lower prices |
Falling | Low | A thin move that can reverse easily |
"High" only makes sense against the stock's own history. Relative volume divides current volume by the stock's average for the same period, so 2.5 means 2.5 times normal activity. That makes 5 lakh shares a spike for a stock averaging 2 lakh, and a quiet day for one averaging 50 lakh.
TradingView notes that a low-volume breakout (a move past a level the stock had struggled to cross) can prove false. Volume works best as a cross-check on other technical indicators.
Traded Volume vs Delivery Volume: A Real NSE Example
Volume shows how many shares traded, but not how many buyers kept them. NSE fills that gap with delivery data: deliverable quantity and its share of traded quantity.
This row from NSE's security-wise report shows SBIN on 14 January 2019. It illustrates the data only and is not a view on the stock.
Metric | Value |
Total Traded Quantity (volume) | 1,03,72,933 shares |
Number of trades | 96,381 |
Deliverable quantity | 30,10,704 shares |
Delivery percentage | 29.02% |
Value traded (derived: volume × volume-weighted average price of ₹301.15) | About ₹312 crore |
About 71% of that day's volume never reached a demat account, the electronic account that holds your shares. Low delivery signals heavy same-day trading. High delivery signals buyers holding shares beyond the day, the split explained in intraday vs delivery trading.
Today, delivered shares reach the buyer's demat account under the T+1 settlement cycle.
Going Deeper: When Volume in Stock Market Can Mislead You
Four Indian market situations break the usual reading.
Situation | What you see | What is happening |
Circuit lock | Volume shrinks | The stock sits at its price band (typically 2%, 5%, 10% or 20%) with buyers but no sellers, or the reverse |
Block deal | Volume and delivery jump | Under SEBI's revised framework, in force since December 2025, a block deal needs a minimum ₹25 crore order and must end in delivery |
Trade-to-trade stock | Delivery reads 100% | Stocks in the trade-to-trade segment, such as the BE series, cannot be traded intraday |
Futures and options | Volume and open interest diverge | Volume counts contracts traded; open interest counts positions still open |
Conclusion: A Four-Question Volume Check
Before trusting a volume spike, ask four questions:
1. Is volume well above this stock's own average?
2. Did delivery percentage rise with it?
3. Was there a block or bulk deal that day?
4. Is the stock locked at a circuit?
Run the check on the TradingView charts in an Indiabulls Securities equity trading account, alongside NSE's delivery data. Treat volume as context for a price move, never as a signal on its own.
