Field note · 9 July 2026
Reading volume beside the range
Volume on our sheets sits under the same range it belongs to. It does not get its own plot line of meaning.
On circle nights the printed sheet has price on top and volume underneath, on one page, aligned by session. Students still try to read the lower half as a second market. The evening goes better when volume is forced to stay beside the range it came from.
Two comparisons, and then done
The circle uses two comparisons and refuses a third. First: a wide price bar with quiet volume against a wide bar with heavy volume, inside the same range. Second: a narrow bar with heavy volume sitting on a range edge. That is enough to talk about for one sheet. A third comparison usually drifts into a story about hidden buyers the sheet cannot show.
Quiet and heavy are judged against the bars printed on that page, not against a memory of last month. If the pack does not show the comparison, we do not invent it.
What we write in the margin
The margin gets a plain phrase. "Wide bar, volume no higher than the prior three." "Narrow bar on the range high, volume the heaviest on the sheet." These phrases can be copied into a journal and checked later. They do not tell anyone to buy or sell. They record a pairing.
If your own journal already uses volume words, bring one page to a review sitting rather than to the circle. The circle works on a shared chart so that six people are pairing the same bars. A private volume diary needs the journal review, where the words can be matched to your dates.
What stays off the sheet
We do not color volume by a rule the room has not written down. We do not smooth it. We do not cover the price bars with a study that needs a legend. The Thursday sheet has to be readable in silence at 19:00, by someone who missed last week.
If volume matters to your trading, let it matter as a sentence next to a range. The range remains the subject. Volume is how you describe the effort inside it, and only while both are on the same page.