Hello,
  I am thinking of switching to QuoteCenter but need to know if the Forex live and historical intraday include forex activity (tick) volume from accross the 800 or so contributing banks? As in
esignal http://kb.esignalcentral.com/display/2n/articleDirect/index.asp?aid=1422&r=0.8195764  under "What does Forex volume represent?"

Thanks!

Hi, just bumping this question up. Any users of QC Forex package care to comment, would be much appreciated, thanks!

Looks like the link I gave above is broken, here is a working (for now) one... sorry about that:
http://kb.esignalcentral.com/article.asp?article=1422&p=1

This forum seems pretty slow, no QC Forex users or Equis support(?) is there another place I should be asking about Forex volume in QuoteCenter?
Even google is now listing this thread as the #1 source for forex info in QuoteCenter... not too helpful for me though hehe http://www.google.com/search?q=QuoteCenter+Forex+volume

If it's the same as the "volume" shown in Reuters for spot FX, it is recording the number of contribution bid/ask changes that occurred.

The more contributors to a particular currency pair, the more ticks you'll see.

It has no relationship to the amount traded at all and, because you don't know how many contributors there are at any particular point in time, it's a useless metric.

If you want to see actual volume, consider trading currency futures instead.  They are traded on a proper exchange with fixed contract sizes.  Spot forex is an OTC market only.

Cheers,
Richard.

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www.premiumdata.net

G'Day Richard, thanks very much for taking the time to reply.

Richard Dale:

If it's the same as the "volume" shown in Reuters for spot FX, it is recording the number of contribution bid/ask changes that occurred.The more contributors to a particular currency pair, the more ticks you'll see.

Yes, this is exactly what I wish to confirm is in QuoteCenter FX.  So I guess the question now is: Does QuoteCenter FX deliver "volume" as shown in Reuters for spot FX?  (Also be good to know if it is included in historical data requests?)

Richard Dale:

It has no relationship to the amount traded at all and, because you don't know how many contributors there are at any particular point in time, it's a useless metric.

Understood,  however I do need it for various custom indicators to function so unfortunately cannot move to QC from eSignal without confirming it is delivered in QC. 

Cheers,
Keith.

The volume on spot forex is always going to be meaningless because each of the interbank dealing desks never report what they have traded.

So, volume on spot forex is a meaningless figure.  Having a formula that relies on volume, which itself is meaningless, will simply give you a garbage result.

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www.premiumdata.net

Hi Richard,  without getting too much off track from the question on this thread: bid/ask activity Volume on spot forex is not as useless you might think, It allows you avoid periods of no actionable quotes.  Its just useless for "traditional" indicators, so I am not dissagreeing with you there.

So the question is still valid and I am really hoping to confirm:  Is bid/ask activity volume available via [QuoteCenter], and if so is the useful information also delivered when requestiong historical data?

Richard Dale:

The volume on spot forex is always going to be meaningless because each of the interbank dealing desks never report what they have traded.

So, volume on spot forex is a meaningless figure.  Having a formula that relies on volume, which itself is meaningless, will simply give you a garbage result.

 

Honestly Richard, you know nothing about tick volume, it is not useless, only to people who cannot read it. Tick volume is very important substitute in the absence of real volume. why don't you study a real volume chart, and a tick volume chart. You'll see that there is little diffrence.

 

A tick chart on FX shows you when the smart money have been buying or selling in enough quantity in order to move the market, and it will also show you when they are done and testing the market for supply, just before an upmove, or that there is not enough demand at the highs after distribution has taken place, just before a down move.

 

Shame about your ignorance.

Tick volume on forex is only a measure of the number of price updates of a chart provider's data feed for a particular currency pair. 

In the case of multicontributor feeds, the tick volume also increases as more contributors come online (due to timezone differences). In such multicontributor feeds, there are often large price movements during the asian-hours trading data, but the "tick volume" is dwarfed by the volume during the European-US trading data due to the sheer number of contributors.

There is no evidence that it is related to actual trading activity.

What do you consider to be a "real volume chart"?  Can you name the market/instrument please?

At certain times it appears to be visually correlated to actual trading but until someone has done any serious analysis such as granger causality modelling and identified how they are actually getting any meaningful volume figures for an OTC market, I won't be convinced.

I am not disagreeing with your trading methods though - just your understanding of what tick volume actually represents and what it is correlated to.  For your trading method, it may well be quite helpful to know which pairs are being rapidly requoted but don't mistake this for actual volume.

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www.premiumdata.net

Hi guys,
    Debate over the utility of the such data aside, I would still like to hear if it is actually available or not.  Such slow response on a basic question does not bode well though....

Thanks.

It does not appear that we have a field in QuoteCenter for this.  If there was, we would still not be able to bring that data live into MetaStock (as MetaStock only receives Date, Time, Open, High, Low, Close (Last), Volume, and Open Interest).

I tried a large variety of Bid/Tick/Volume related fields inside QuoteCenter and none of them provided anything resembling volume.

Edit - As an update to this, it does appear you can see the total ticks through an Analytics page in QuoteCenter.  For example, if you type $$EURUSD/T into an Analytics, you will see a field along the top that has a "Ticks" value.  However, I do not see any way to chart this historically.

Thanks very much for checking Justin.  If you (or anyone) do someday find a way to access the total ticks, I would be very interested to hear about it - it would mean QC is a viable alternative for us, thanks!

richard, you are both right and wrong on that issue. the difference depend on the level of data you are getting from reuters.

as participants in reuter's dealing network, i.e banks and prime brokerage customers. you are able to see e.g AUD=D2 and EUR=EBS prices. i.e real dealable price. and the volume showing on your reuters xtra 3000 chart will represent the actual transacted trades (not # of contribution changes, which is meaningless as you said).

however the problem is that if you are neither an interbank on their network nor a prime on prime brokerage customers. by binding contract reuters and EBS do not release dealable price to you (level 2 if you wanna call it that). hence you will most likely only have e.g. EUR= prices on your reuters xtra 3000, which is generated by contributors, which is meaningless.... I can not imagine why anybody would ever pay for that stuff.

so i suspect that QuoteCenter and eSignal are all getting the tick volume from the reuters contributer prices. i.e. EUR= level price, not the actual dealable price, hence the volume is useless...unfortunately...

i am still searching an affordable way for individual traders to get the tick volume information... please let me know if anybody has any success...

That is exactly what you will see in reuters Xtra 3000 under =D4 prices, you will see the dealable price, but you will not be able to chart the tick

Justin:

It does not appear that we have a field in QuoteCenter for this.  If there was, we would still not be able to bring that data live into MetaStock (as MetaStock only receives Date, Time, Open, High, Low, Close (Last), Volume, and Open Interest).

I tried a large variety of Bid/Tick/Volume related fields inside QuoteCenter and none of them provided anything resembling volume.

Edit - As an update to this, it does appear you can see the total ticks through an Analytics page in QuoteCenter.  For example, if you type $$EURUSD/T into an Analytics, you will see a field along the top that has a "Ticks" value.  However, I do not see any way to chart this historically.