What CVD does, and when it works.
Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) adds up the delta — the difference between aggressive buy volume (market buys lifting the ask) and aggressive sell volume (market sells hitting the bid) — bar by bar into a running cumulative line. The result is a picture of who has been in control of order flow over any given window. A price rise accompanied by rising CVD is demand-driven and tends to be sturdier; a price rise with falling or flat CVD suggests sellers are absorbing the move and the trend may be fragile.
The most powerful use is divergence: when price makes a new high but CVD does not, aggressive buyers are not participating in the move. That divergence is a structural warning, not a direct signal — it tells you to tighten stops or look for confirmation before adding, not to blindly short. The mirror divergence (price lower low, CVD higher low) flags absorption of sell pressure and potential exhaustion of the downside.
On TradingView, several free community CVD scripts are available — look for 'Cumulative Volume Delta' by authors such as LonesomeTheBlue or similar. The built-in Volume Delta script on some premium plans is equivalent. CVD is most useful on liquid crypto pairs (BTC, ETH, SOL) where volume data is reported reliably. On low-volume alts, thin order books distort the delta signal.