Finding High Relative Volume Stocks in Interactive Brokers
Summary
The document discusses finding stocks whose trading volume is high compared with a benchmark using Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation. It distinguishes relative volume from percentage price change and points to the market scanner’s “hot contracts by volume” feature, which ranks contracts using today’s volume relative to average daily volume. The cited average is a 30-day exponential moving average of daily volume, making the measure useful for spotting unusually active contracts over the full trading day.
The question also asks about intraday comparisons against recent periods or the prior day, such as one-, three-, or five-minute volume. The answer does not identify a way to calculate those interval-specific comparisons in TWS and mentions that the documented relative-volume indicator requires an eSignal data subscription. Thus, the suggested scanner addresses daily activity relative to a longer-run average, but the note leaves finer intraday relative-volume screening unresolved.
Key ideas
- Relative volume compares current trading volume with a historical volume benchmark.
- The TWS hot-contracts-by-volume scanner ranks contracts by today’s volume relative to average daily volume.
- The cited average daily volume uses a 30-day exponential moving average.
- The discussed scanner covers the full trading day and does not provide an identified short-interval comparison.
- The documented relative-volume indicator is described as requiring an eSignal market-data subscription.
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Full text
# Interactive Brokers - Tracking High Relative Trading Volume # Interactive Brokers - Tracking High Relative Trading Volume I'm new to Interactive Brokers (and day trading), I am trying to setup my different charts etc. How can I have alerts/monitor for any stock that is trading at above average volume - compared to X? Where X can be last 30 days or yesterday or other benchmark. I am following an introduction to day trading, and they explain the below: > There are a few techniques for making sure we are trading the right stocks. The most obvious technique is to simply look at the daily volume. If a stock trades an average of 500k shares per day and has already traded 2 million shares, there is above average interest. The other option is to use stock scanning software to scan for stocks with high relative volume. The relative volume for the day is translated into a number, a ratio. ‘1’ is average and ‘2’ being 2x average. Stocks can trade on any multiple of relative volume, so anything above a ‘2’ is interesting. Is there any way to do this with the IB Trader Workstation? I had a look at the Mosaic Market Scanner but I'm not sure what the change % is and if it relates to the above? (is this in the right direction, or something completely different..) See here: Finally I found here https://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/en/software/tws/usersguidebook/thetradingwindow/high_low_volume.htm that it explains Relative Volume, but I'm not sure how to use this in TWS (or if there is a better/free option). > Relative Volume Requires a subscription to eSignal market data. Compares today’s volume with volume from the previous trading day. Indicator grows toward the right as today’s volume increases. ## Answer by Andrei Ciuca (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/44515 You can use in IB market scanner, hot contracts by volume - you have this also in the api. today'sVolume/avgDailyVolume is highest - for hot contracts by volume avgDailyVolume is a 30-day exponential moving average of the contract's daily volume. This is for the entire day, but I don't see something to calculate for 1min, 3 min, or 5 min. Did you find something better? (sorry for the question but I don't have reputation to comment) Thanks
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