Order flow / tape reading
Price is the result; order flow is the cause. Here you learn to read the real buying and selling pressure — who's aggressive, where the liquidity sits, where it gets absorbed — instead of only the finished candle. It needs level-2 data and practice, but it's the lens professional day traders use.
By the TradingCalculator.Pro team · Updated on · About us
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What is order flow?
Reading the actual orders that move price: who buys and sells aggressively (at market) and who posts walls of liquidity (with limits). The chart tells you what HAPPENED; order flow tells you what's happening NOW and why. It's not a crystal ball — it's very short-term context.
The order book (DOM / depth)
Shows the resting orders: sells (asks) above price and buys (bids) below. The size at each level tells you where liquidity sits — a big wall slows price; its sudden disappearance often precedes a move. Beware: it can be faked (spoofing).
The tape (time & sales) and aggressors
Every executed trade hits the bid (aggressive seller, printed red) or the ask (aggressive buyer, green). A burst of large prints on the ask = buyers pushing. The speed and size of the tape tell you whether a move has conviction or is just noise.
Volume delta
The net of aggressive buy volume minus sell volume. Positive delta = market buyers dominate. The powerful signal is DIVERGENCE: price rises but delta falls (aggressive buying drying up) → possible reversal. The day's cumulative delta shows who's winning the tug-of-war.
Footprint / cluster chart
Opens each candle from the inside: it shows how much volume traded at the bid and the ask at EVERY price. You see where trading really happened and the imbalances (far more on one side). A footprint with aggressive buying at the candle's low and no follow-through = a trap.
Absorption
A flood of aggression arrives (heavy market volume) but price DOESN'T move: a huge limit order is absorbing it all. It's one of the most reliable reversal signals — someone big is defending that level. The opposite of a breakout: pressure hits a wall and exhausts itself.
Iceberg orders
A giant order split and hidden: it shows only a small slice, and each time it's eaten it refills itself at the same price. On the tape you see repeated prints at one level without the visible size dropping. It signals strong institutional interest at that price.
Point of Control (POC) & value area
From the volume profile: the POC is the price where the MOST traded in the session, and the value area is the zone where 70% of the volume happened. They act as a magnet and as intraday support/resistance — price tends to return to the POC and to bounce at the value-area edges.