Price Volume Trend

What it measures

PVT is a cumulative running total, similar in spirit to OBV, but instead of simply adding or subtracting the full day's volume based on whether price went up or down, it weights each day's volume contribution by the actual percentage price change. A day with a huge percentage move contributes proportionally more to the running total than a day with a tiny move, even at the same volume level.

How readings are interpreted

A rising PVT confirms an uptrend is being accompanied by proportionally meaningful volume; a falling PVT confirms a downtrend has real volume behind it. Like OBV, the absolute level of PVT is not comparable across different tickers — what matters is its trend and its relationship to price, not the raw number.

Conventional levels

• PVT rising alongside price: volume confirms the uptrend
• PVT falling while price rises (bearish divergence): the rally isn't attracting proportional volume, a warning sign
• PVT direction is compared to its own recent trend (e.g. a short moving average of PVT) rather than to any fixed universal level

Where it works, and where it does not

Like OBV, PVT's raw cumulative value depends heavily on how long the ticker has traded and how volatile it's typically been — it's only meaningful in relative, trend terms, never as a standalone absolute number, and never across different tickers.

Commonly read alongside

• OBV: Very similar concept — the two will often move together; PVT's percentage-weighting can make it slightly more sensitive to large single-day moves
• Price trend: PVT is primarily useful as a volume-confirmation layer on top of an existing price trend read, not standalone
• Breakouts: A breakout confirmed by a corresponding jump in PVT carries more weight than one without

Known limitations

• Cumulative and unbounded, so cross-ticker or absolute-level comparisons are meaningless — only trend and divergence matter
• A single huge percentage-move day can dominate the cumulative total for a long time afterward
• Largely redundant with OBV in practice for most use cases — few traders use both simultaneously

In practice

• Use PVT trend direction (rising/falling) as a volume-confirmation check on a price trend, exactly like OBV
• Divergence between PVT and price is conventionally read as a warning sign rather than relying on the absolute level
• If already using OBV, PVT is optional — they tell a very similar story most of the time
• Best applied to the same ticker's own history over time, never compared across different tickers directly