VWAP

Discover a simple VWAP trading strategy: buy when price crosses above VWAP, sell when it crosses below. See how this indicator-based approach can outperform buy

Published · Updated · Methodology: Technical Indicators

Part of: VWAP Strategies

  • Methodology: Technical Indicators
  • Content type: strategy
  • Timeframes: Not specified
  • Markets: Not specified

Indicators used

  • VWAP

Source video

Decoded from: A Simple VWAP Rule Beats Buy & Hold | Full Backtest In Python by CodeTrading — watch the original

Key timestamps:

  • 0:00 - Introduction to VWAP strategy
  • 0:10 - Strategy rule: 'If the price crosses above the VWAP, we buy'
  • 0:15 - Strategy rule: 'If the price crosses below the VWAP, we sell'

Strategy overview

VWAP (volume weighted average price) tracks the average price of every trade over a period weighted by the volume traded at each level, which makes it a running reference for where the bulk of participation actually occurred. This entry decodes a video from CodeTrading, a channel that builds and tests trading ideas in Python rather than discussing them on charts, and the framing here is deliberately minimal: one indicator, no filters, no confirmations, and a rule short enough to state in a single sentence.

What sets this video apart from most VWAP material is the benchmark it chooses. Its title — "A Simple VWAP Rule Beats Buy & Hold | Full Backtest In Python" — makes the comparison explicit: the question is not whether the rule produces trades, but whether it earns its complexity against simply holding the asset, a bar most indicator strategies quietly avoid. That claim belongs to the source video, not to us; the value of the approach is that writing the rule in code makes the comparison something a viewer can re-run rather than take on faith.

It is also worth noting what the source leaves open. No timeframe, market or VWAP configuration is specified, so a default setup is implied rather than stated — and with VWAP those choices are not cosmetic, since the anchoring point determines what the average is even measuring. Anyone rebuilding this idea would need to pin those decisions down first, along with realistic costs, before a buy-and-hold comparison means anything.

Topics

vwap strategy · trading strategy · vwap trading · technical indicators · price action · tradingview strategy · pine script · intraday strategy · volume weighted average price · momentum trading · day trading strategy · simple trading strategy

Frequently asked questions

What does VWAP actually measure?

VWAP is the average traded price over a period, weighted by the volume executed at each price level. It answers a different question than a moving average: instead of asking where price has been, it asks where most of the trading actually took place.

What is this particular VWAP video about?

It is a CodeTrading video that takes a minimal VWAP rule and runs a full backtest on it in Python. The emphasis is on testing methodology and code rather than on chart reading or discretionary interpretation.

Does a simple VWAP rule really beat buy and hold?

That is the claim made in the source video's title, based on the backtest it runs. Whether it holds up depends entirely on the asset, the period tested, the timeframe and the trading costs applied — none of which transfer automatically to other markets. Treat it as one result to reproduce, not a general finding.

What should I decide before testing a VWAP strategy myself?

At minimum: the timeframe, the market, how the VWAP is anchored (session, daily, rolling), and what commissions and slippage you apply. Strategy Decoder catalogs strategies like this one from video sources so you can see what a source specifies and what it leaves to you before you test it.

About this strategy page

This trading strategy was decoded by Strategy Decoder's AI from a public YouTube trading video and turned into a structured, reviewable specification. In the interactive app this page shows the full entry and exit logic, risk management settings, the indicators involved with their parameters, AlgoWizard-compatible logic and a Pine Script export ready for TradingView backtesting — plus an automated backtest verdict when one has been computed for this strategy.

Strategy Decoder catalogs 2,229 decoded strategies. Each one is extracted with confidence scoring, cross-linked to the indicators it uses, and kept up to date as new videos are processed daily. Load this page with JavaScript enabled to use the interactive tools, or start from the strategy explorer to filter by methodology, market and timeframe.

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