normal people think that the volumes in the capital markets can say something, in reality they do not serve to prove anything. the order flow is also relative.
If there is a big rally or selloff happening intraday on a 5M chart, sometimes you will get a climax bar that is the biggest bar of the move, that also has the largest amount of volume out of any bar in the move. This bar often signals a climactic exhaustion, and the market will then either go sideways or reverse. Is it 100% reliable? No. But I have found it to be useful.
This reminds me of when I was in grade school. I use to say "why do i need to learn about parabolas, they are useless." Little did I know..
You are right volume is completely useless and a waste of time. Knowing your supply and demand levels in trading is for fools. keep it up, we need more traders like you. thoughts and prayers....
Volume can tell you something for a very short period of time which is usually not enough to make money.I agree, it`s hardly useful.
If volume data is useless, don't use it !! If volume data is useful, use it !! If you don't know how and where to get volume data, don't say volume data is useless. The problem is that many people use volume data from market makers which are free. Or perhaps they get delayed data! It might not be true volume data but just number of transactions. Be careful of free thing because if you get garbage in, you get garbage out. Use volume data from exchanges like CME, ICE, Eurex.... You have to pay for those data. eg for ICE, datafee is around US$120 / mth for the charting software, plus another few tens of dollars to be paid to the broker. If you are serious about trading, you have to pay for those overheads. pay for quality data and you might get quality result. After you have paid for the datafee and if you find volume data is useless, then your comment is valid.
The way I see it, volume affects you only if there's not enough liquidity. Never thought it was worth putting on a chart.