# Trade Count (/platform/charts/order-flow/trade-count)



These three tools count **prints**, not volume. They need [footprint data](/platform/charts/data) with trade counts; bars without counts leave a gap rather than plotting zero. They also need a fixed bar duration, so they are unavailable on monthly timeframes. Add them from **Indicators → Orderflow**.

Volume and trade count diverging is the signal worth watching: high volume on few prints means large players; high print counts on modest volume means a crowd of small ones.

![](/images/charts/order-flow/trade-count.png)

## Trade Count [#trade-count]

**Trade Count** is `buy count + sell count` per bar, as columns in a new pane. It shows how many prints occurred, not how much volume they were: participation rather than size.

The only setting is the column **Color**.

## Trade Count Delta [#trade-count-delta]

**Trade Count Delta** is `buy count − sell count` per bar, as sign-colored columns in a new pane (**Up / Down colors**). It answers whether more prints were buys or sells, regardless of their size.

Compared against [Volume Delta](/platform/charts/order-flow/volume-delta) on the same bar, it separates crowd from size: positive volume delta with negative trade count delta means a few large buyers absorbed many small sellers.

## Cumulative Trade Count Delta [#cumulative-trade-count-delta]

**Cumulative Trade Count Delta** (CTCD) is the running sum of per-bar Trade Count Delta. It shows whether buy or sell prints have been accumulating, not how large those prints were.

* **Style**: **Candles** (default, with intra-bar wicks showing how far the count delta swung within each bar), **Line**, or **Area**.
* **Anchor**: where the running sum resets, in UTC periods: **Day** (default), **Week**, **Month**, or **All data**.

CTCD is the print-count sibling of [Cumulative Volume Delta](/platform/charts/order-flow/volume-delta#cumulative-volume-delta). When the two disagree (CVD climbing while CTCD is flat), the buying is coming from *fewer, larger* trades rather than broad participation. Watching them together separates size from crowd.