Cumulative volume delta (CVD): what it measures and how to read it

Cumulative volume delta (CVD) is a running total of aggressive buying minus aggressive selling. Each candle has a volume delta: the volume bought by traders who lifted the ask, minus the volume sold by traders who hit the bid. CVD adds those deltas up, candle after candle, into one line under the price chart.

When CVD rises, more volume has been bought at the market than sold at it since the count started. When it falls, the opposite is true.

Delta is about the aggressor, not the number of buyers

Every trade has a buyer and a seller, so the total bought always equals the total sold. Delta splits volume by who crossed the spread: the trader who wanted to be filled at once and paid the spread for it. A positive delta says aggressive buyers were busier than aggressive sellers. It does not say there were more buyers. EdgeDepth takes the aggressor side from the exchange’s trade feed instead of inferring it from whether price ticked up or down. Order flow covers the difference.

The level depends on where you start

CVD has no natural zero. Its value is the sum since the first candle counted, so the same market shows a different CVD level on a chart that loads a week of history and on one that loads a day. EdgeDepth shows both kinds: the chart’s CVD counts from the first loaded candle, and the Real-time lane starts from zero at the left edge of the screen. Compare its direction and its swings with price, not its level with another chart’s. When two platforms disagree, the cause is usually the starting point, the exchange, or whether volume is counted in coins or in dollars.

Reading CVD against price

• Agreement. Price and CVD rise together: aggressive buying is moving price. Falling together is the mirror image.
• Divergence. Price makes a higher high while CVD makes a lower high: price went higher on less net aggressive buying. Traders read it as buying pressure fading. The mirror is a lower low in price with a higher low in CVD, read as selling fading.
• Absorption. CVD falls hard while price holds: aggressive sellers are filling against passive buyers who keep their bids in place. In a footprint chart this shows as heavy sell volume at prices that keep holding.

These describe the flow. None of them is a forecast on its own: a divergence can last a long time while price keeps going. Whether a pattern like this has paid on crypto perps is something to count rather than assume, and how research works shows how EdgeDepth tests a pattern against the record.

CVD in EdgeDepth

• On the chart. Open Indicators and pick CVD under Volume and flow. It is free on every market. EdgeDepth draws CVD as candles under the price chart: each opens at the running total before the candle and closes at the total after it, with the high and low inside the candle where the volume stream provides them, and is coloured by whether the total rose or fell. It is measured in dollars and counts from the first candle loaded on the chart.
• It does not guess. If any loaded candle is missing its split between buys and sells, the panel says “CVD unavailable: missing buy/sell trade history” instead of drawing a line across the hole.
• In Real-time. The Real-time view has a CVD lane: buy minus sell volume over the visible time, starting from zero at the left edge (Layers, then CVD under Real-time view). It is free wherever Real-time is: live on Binance Futures BTCUSDT, a Pro view on other live markets, and open to everyone in replays.
• In the order book. The DOM shows the buys and sells traded at each price beside a running delta, which you can reset every 5, 15 or 60 minutes, each session, or only when you choose.

To see CVD on a recorded move with no sign-up, open the public replay.

CVD questions

Is CVD the same as volume delta?

Volume delta is one candle’s buys minus sells. CVD is the running total of those deltas. Some tools call the per-candle number “delta” and the running line “cumulative delta”.

What does a CVD divergence mean?

Price and CVD disagree: price makes a new high or low that CVD does not match. It says the move came with less aggressive volume behind it than the one before. It does not say whether or when price turns.

Spot CVD or perp CVD?

They count different markets. On a perpetual futures chart, CVD counts trades in that perpetual; spot CVD counts the spot market. Traders compare the two to see which market is leading a move. EdgeDepth records perpetual futures, so its CVD is perp CVD on the chart’s exchange.

Is CVD free on EdgeDepth?

Yes. The CVD indicator is free on every market. The Real-time CVD lane follows Real-time access: free live on Binance Futures BTCUSDT and open in every replay.