I have already posted the ref http://www.amibroker.com/guide/afl/afl_view.php?id=220 It is not just a name, it is the VAP indicator. It gives what http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com has included as Volume by Price Indicator. [see the att. MSFT VAP chart from bigcharts AND amibroker] Check again your sources, please...
Yes. But when looking at longer term charts, Tick Data isnt that important b/c it gets rounded anyway.
One can make an indicator out of anything. "Volume by price" is not an indicator. It is simply data. All charting programs have it. If a software vendor fiddles with it to make it an indicator, then it becomes an indicator. However, the original question was not addressed to "VAP". If it had been, the poster would have referenced amibroker. If he meant to reference amibroker and didn't, that's not my problem.
If I remember this right, this stuff has originally been published by Mel Widner in 1996 in a TASC article called "Gauging Price Mobility" or something like that. Your favorite google or www.traders.com will help you out with more info on this. I believe the article once was offered for free as a pdf-file at the TASC site, maybe someone has is and shares it with us? Widner, however, measured the time, i.e. number of bars, a price stayed at a specific level, other implementations take volume or both into account. The concept got somehow forgotten until Steidlmeyer "invented" the Market Profile (please note here, that I have never looked into MP, so no comparision or comment intended. It just looks similar). Perhaps like me, some people remembered the Widner stuff by association, and thus Widner's price distribution got finally en vogue. Quite some different software companies implemented it, each under a different name. Maybe it's because Widner called it somewhere "Price Distribution Function", a term that has been recoined later and that is now used in a different sense. What I found rather interesting in this thread is the distinction made between "indicator" and "data". To me, the values generated by a generator or algorithm, say, RSI are just "data" until interpreted to give an "indication". Still I would like to hear your definition. Best, agrau
Volume at price is not an indicator. As db states, it's data. You can rearrange the data until you are blue in the face, but it's still data. Mind you, certain arrangements can tend to produce useful insights (eg. volume at price). Now, if you perform calculations on it (like stochastics, MACD, RSI, etc etc) then it's an indicator. At least this is conceptually how most books, seminars and speakers present the ideas. If you choose to define it differently, understand you're likely to get quite a few people disagreeing with you.
Under this "definition" EOD Volume is an indicator, you need to perform calculations to have it [add the intraday Volumes...] Anyway, bigcharts.com has VAP under the lable "indicators", as you may see in the att. gif
You just can't give this up, can you? Since you don't understand what an indicator is, there's not a whole lot of point in continuing this. I suspect everyone else now understands the function of volume-by-price bars.