Volume shelf

A price that took an unusual share of the volume around it. The measurement never touches your chart bars, which is why the same shelf sits at the same price on every timeframe.

Setting names are shown in English because that is how they appear in the Quantower settings window.

What a shelf is

A volume shelf is a price that took an unusual share of the volume traded around it, drawn as a horizontal line and kept on the chart.

"Unusual" is the important word, and it is a ratio, not a threshold: the level is compared against the average level of the window it was measured in (Volume shelf strength (x avg level)). That means the same setting carries the same meaning in a quiet session as in a busy one — you are not re-tuning a contract count every time volatility changes.

Three windows at once

Most tools make you choose a lookback. OrderVane does not, because the choice is not a fact about the market — it is a fact about how you trade. A scalper and a swing trader are both right, and they want different levels.

So every price is measured against three windows simultaneously — 30, 60 and 240 minutes — and the line weight follows how many of them found it unusual:

A level that stands out in all three is a different object from one that only shows up over a single stretch, and the line says so without you reading a number. If you only want the strongest, Volume shelf min scales drops the rest — at 3, roughly a third survive.

The same shelf on every timeframe

This is the part that surprises people, so it is worth being explicit: the measurement does not use your chart bars at all.

OrderVane reads a fixed five-minute source and slides the three windows across it. Switching from a 1-minute chart to hourly does not move a shelf, and does not change its numbers. What changes is only how much of the chart you can see.

That is a deliberate design decision. A level defined by your bar size is a level that disagrees with itself the moment you change timeframe — and a reference you cannot compare across charts is not much of a reference.

Reading the label

A shelf label reads like this:

762×438 30m 64% ●2

• 762×438 — volume at the bid on the left, at the ask on the right. Same order as the footprint cells, so the two never contradict each other.
• 30m — the window those two numbers were measured over (30m / 60m / 4h). Shelves on the same chart can carry different windows, so read this before comparing two shelves' numbers.
• 64% — the winning side's share.
• ●2 — how many large prints landed on that price. This separates a shelf built by a few big orders from one built by a crowd of small ones. Omitted when there were none.

A leading « means the shelf started further left than the screen currently shows. Without it, a label clamped to the left edge would read as if the shelf started there — the marker is how the chart says "this began off-screen" instead of implying something it does not know.

Colour is the side that traded more at that price. When the two sides are close, the line stays neutral grey — a balanced level has no side to claim.

When the line stops

• Solid line — price has not come back to that level yet, so the line runs to the right edge.
• Dashed line — price has come back, and the line stops at the bar where that happened.

The shelf stays either way. A level price has already tested is still worth knowing about, and deleting it would remove exactly the evidence you came for. Shelves do not expire with age; when there are more than the chart draws, the oldest drop off first (Volume shelf max active).

Volume shelf extend past touch runs every line to the right edge instead — easier to spot, at the cost of the lines crossing your bars. A short vertical tick marks where each shelf began.

Shelf or HVN?

They are close relatives, and the difference is worth knowing if you are used to volume profile language.

An HVN (high volume node) is a peak in a profile — you build the profile, then read where it bulges. A shelf is a per-price judgement: is this level unusual for the window it sits in? The two often land on the same prices, but the shelf carries a comparison baked into it, which is what lets the same setting work across instruments and sessions without adjustment.

What Pro adds: a count

In Pro, once price comes back to a level, OrderVane watches what the closes do with it and appends a count:

3/8 means price visited that shelf eight times, and three of those visits ended without a close on the other side.

The close decides. A wick through the level is not a break — price has to finish a bar on the other side. Penetration depth, time spent beyond, and absorption at the level are evidence you can read from the other markers; they do not cast a vote.

The line carries the current state alongside the count: solid at full weight while the last close respected the level, faint and dotted once a close landed beyond it. So a faint line reading 2/9 says it held twice across nine visits, and the most recent close went through.

This is a record, not a forecast. We looked for the pattern you would expect — that a shelf which held before is more likely to hold again — and we could not find it in our own data. So the label carries no mark of approval or failure. It gives you the two numbers and leaves the read to you.

Broken shelves stay on the chart. OrderVane does not claim that broken support becomes resistance; it records only that the level stopped holding.

Honest limits

• A shelf records what happened at that price. It is not a forecast that price will react there.
• The floor adapts, unless you set one. Volume shelf min volume is an absolute floor in contracts. By default it is derived from the observed average and adapts on its own; set a number and that number wins. The strength setting asks whether a level is unusual for its window — this one asks whether it is large at all.
• It depends on your data feed. The five-minute source is built from what your broker provides. Where that data does not reach, there are no shelves — OrderVane does not extrapolate them.
• The verdict count is Pro. Lite draws the shelves themselves; the held/visits count needs Pro. Shelves are on by default in every tier.

Related

• How to read a footprint bar — where the bid/ask ordering in the label comes from
• Naked POC — a bar-scoped level, retired on touch rather than kept
• Session levels — the previous session's VAH, VAL and POC
• All docs