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CVD (Cumulative Volume Delta)

The CVD sums, bar after bar, the delta — market-bought volume minus market-sold volume. It tracks the aggressors; its divergence with price is the footprint of absorption by passive orders.

On this page

Every trade has two legs — a buyer and a seller — but only one of the two aggressed: they accepted the other side's price to get filled immediately. A bar's delta is the balance of those aggressions: volume executed as market buys minus volume executed as market sells. The CVD is the running sum of deltas: the ledger of who, over time, raised their hand first.

In plain terms — At an auction there are people shouting "I'll buy at your price!" and people sitting quietly with their card raised, waiting. The CVD counts the shouts, with their sign. If buying shouts keep growing but price stops rising, someone very large is selling from their seat — and winning.

How it is calculated

Execution Attribution
Market order hitting the ask + volume (aggressive buyer)
Market order hitting the bid − volume (aggressive seller)

It requires a feed that distinguishes the aggressor's side (tick data / order flow): this is what separates the CVD from the OBV, which approximates the sign with the close's direction. As with the OBV, the absolute value does not matter: read the slope and the divergences.

How to read the chart — Top: price grinding out new highs. Bottom: the CVD rising with price in the healthy stretch, then rolling over while price still climbs — the zone highlighted in red. Interactive — the points show the in-phase stretch, the absorption divergence and the calculation rule.

INDICATOR · ORDER FLOW CVD — the running sum of aggressors Per-bar delta = market buys − market sells · CVD = cumulative sum CYCLEPEDIA DIAGRAM — EMICICLO PRICE — NEW HIGHS Price 107 116 124 CVD — CUMULATIVE VOLUME DELTA divergence PRICE · LAST 14 BARS +3.9% CVD · LAST 14 BARS -64% A price/CVD divergence is the footprint of absorption
Price up, delta down: aggressors keep buying but are absorbed by passive sell orders. Effort without result.
Hover or tap the highlighted points

Reading it in practice

  1. In phase = healthy move — price and CVD rising together: market buyers meet little resistance, the move has real fuel.
  2. Bearish divergence (absorption at the top) — price at new highs, CVD flat or falling: buy aggressions crash into limit sell orders (icebergs included) that absorb them without yielding price. Effort without result — see absorption — often the prelude to a turn.
  3. Bullish divergence (absorption at the bottom) — the mirror image: new price lows with a rising CVD, aggressive sellers exhausted against passive demand.
  4. Level + flow — the CVD performs best where a level already matters (POC, VWAP, a watched support): there, the divergence tells you how the battle at that level is ending.

Limits and traps

Warning — The CVD depends on the feed: perpetuals vs spot, different exchanges, different aggregations produce different curves for the same instrument. Before reading a divergence, make sure you know which market you are summing.

  • The aggressor is not necessarily the "informed" side: institutional execution algorithms slice orders to look like ordinary flow.
  • Over long timeframes the informational edge dilutes: the CVD was born for intraday work and the study of levels.
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