Relative Volume (RVOL)
Today's activity compared to what is normal for this stock — the "is something happening?" detector.
What it means
Absolute volume misleads: 5M shares is a dead day for a mega-cap and a historic day for a micro-cap. Relative volume divides current activity by that stock's own typical activity, so 3.0 always means "three times its normal".
Intraday, the same idea applies to shorter windows: comparing this second's turnover to the recent average catches accelerations the day-level number smooths away.
Why traders care
- Normalizes across stocks so one threshold works for the whole universe.
- High RVOL is the common denominator of nearly every tradable intraday event.
In a TraderWe strategy
if TradeAmount > AvgTradeAmount(1800) * 4:
Buy()Turnover running 4× its 30-minute average — participation just arrived.
Related terms
Educational content, not investment advice. Engine details describe how TraderWe computes this value; other platforms may define it differently.