Wait, are we talking about tick charts or volume charts? I was referring to volume charts. They're more of a futures thing but wasn't sure if you'd tried them so was keen to hear your thoughts. I.e, a 500 volume chart would be 500 contracts before the next bar opens, whereas a 500 tick chart would be 500 orders placed before the next bar opens.
I used them when I was trading futures as it made sense - it gets you on board with the big guys as the little guys placing tiny positions of 1 contracts won't move the instrument very quickly because the volume they're placing is so small, whereas when the larger players come on board it starts moving a lot quicker.
However, for some reason I could never perfect my trading using volume bars and reverted to tick charts which seemed to work a lot better. I just find it fascinating because most people prefer tick charts but in my mind volume charts make more sense..
I used 133 and 466 tick charts when I traded futures but now just trade regular time-based charts as the style of trading is a lot.. slower.. so the number of trades going through doesn't really matter as I'm just riding the larger trend.