Session Relative Volume

Session Relative Volume is an advanced intraday futures volume indicator that analyzes volume separately for Asia, London, and New York sessions - something standard relative volume tools can’t do.
Instead of aggregating the entire day’s volume, the indicator compares current volume to historical averages for the same session and time of day, allowing you to spot true volume strength and meaningful spikes, especially around session opens.

Background
Relative volume helps traders spot unusual activity: high volume often signals institutional participation and trending days, while low volume suggests weak commitment and possible mean reversion. In futures markets, sessions (Asia, London, New York) must be analyzed separately, but TradingView’s Relative Volume in Time aggregates the entire day, masking session-specific behavior - especially during the New York open. Since volume can vary by more than 20× between sessions, standard averages struggle to identify meaningful volume spikes when trader conviction matters most.

Indicator Description
The “Session Relative Volume” indicator solves these problems by calculating historical average volume specific to each session and time of day, and comparing current volume against those benchmarks. It offers four display modes and fully customizable session times
Altogether, it provides traders with a powerful tool for analyzing intraday futures volume, helping to better assess market participation, trader conviction, and overall market conditions - ultimately supporting improved trading decisions.


Parameters

Mode – display mode:
R-VOL: Relative cumulative session-specific volume at time
VOL CUM: Cumulative session volume at time compared to historical average cumulative session-specific volume
VOL AVG: Average session intrabar volume at time compared to historical average session-specific intrabar volume
VOL: Individual bars volume, highlighting (solid color) unusual spikes

Lookback period – number of days used for calculating historical average session volume at time

MA Len – length of the moving average, representing average bar volume within a session based on previous periods (different from historical cumulative volume!). Used only in VOL and VOL AVG modes

MA Thresh – deviation from moving average, used to detect bar volume spikes (bar volume > K × moving average)

Start Time – End Time and Time Zone parameters for each session. The time zone must be set using TradingView’s format (e.g., GMT+1).