Read the Market·Module 03

Order Flow — see who moves price, tick by tick

A tick-level reconstruction of order flow. A candle gives you four numbers; a footprint gives you about 180× more — buy and sell volume at every price level, delta, point of control and the absorption and sweep events that actually decide direction.

FOCSAL Order Flow footprint chart showing per-level buy and sell volume, point of control, depth heatmap and liquidation bubbles for BTC
Order Flow — footprint, depth heatmap and liquidation bubbles on one canvas

Why it exists

A normal candlestick hides almost everything. It tells you where price opened, closed, and the high and low — and nothing about how it got there or who was pushing. By the time a move shows up as a red or green candle, the information that would have told you it was coming is already gone.

Order Flow rebuilds the candle from the inside. Every bar is broken into price levels, and each level shows the aggressive buying versus selling that happened there — so you can see absorption at a low before the bounce, or a sweep through a high before the reversal, while it's happening rather than after.

What you get

~180×
More per candle
Per-level buy/sell volume, delta, trade count, POC and cluster events — instead of just four OHLC numbers.
11
Composable layers
Toggle footprint cells, depth heatmap, liquidation bubbles, POC, delta, structure breaks and the premium/discount overlay independently.
4
Intelligence reports
Liquidity, Volume Profile, Signals (sweeps + absorption) and multi-timeframe Structure — alongside the chart.
5
Venues, one tape
Aggressor-classified trades aggregated and normalised across five exchanges, in the browser — nothing to install.

The eleven layers

The footprint canvas is built from composable layers in five groups — turn on exactly what you need:

Price · 2

LayerWhat it shows
CandlesClassic OHLC per bar with bull/bear colour-coding
Volume BarsPer-candle volume beneath the price

Liquidity · 3

LayerWhat it shows
Depth HeatmapOrder-book depth projected over time, rainbow-coded from cold liquidity to hot walls — where market makers placed size
Liquidation BubblesEach liquidation as a bubble sized by USD, coloured long vs short, flagged when it lands near a cluster
Liquidity PoolsForward-looking zones where a cluster may form, based on open interest and leverage

Flow · 3

LayerWhat it shows
Footprint CellsThe core view — every candle split into price levels with buy vs sell volume, delta colouring, and per-level absorption flags (1m / 5m / 15m / 1h)
POC LinePoint of Control — the highest-volume level per candle, tracked as a fair-value reference
Delta CandlesA net-delta bar above each candle — buy minus sell, height and colour showing intent

Structure · 2

LayerWhat it shows
Break of Structure (BOS)Chevrons marking broken highs (uptrend confirm) or lows (downtrend confirm)
MSS / CHoCHChange-of-character markers — early reversal signals, classified BOS / MSS / CHoCH

Analytics · 1

LayerWhat it shows
Premium / Discount OverlayRange rails marking premium and discount zones with an ATR-relative break threshold — is price expensive or cheap within its range

Four intelligence reports

Beside the chart, four collapsible reports turn the raw tape into read-outs:

ReportWhat it tells you
LiquidityBid vs ask walls, the nearest cluster, an asymmetry ratio, and a "pressed against wall" flag when price sits within 0.2% of a major cluster
Volume ProfilePer-level volume histogram with POC and value-area high/low, sortable by price or volume
SignalsSweep and absorption events, with sweep clustering — four or more same-direction sweeps in five minutes collapse into a single "stop-hunt cluster" row — and a recency gradient that fades older events
StructureBreak alignment across six timeframes (15m to 1mo) with an overall bias verdict — strong, aligned, transitioning or mixed
The signal most charts miss

Absorption is when the aggressive side hammers a level with volume but price refuses to move — the passive side is soaking it up. Absorption at the lows is quietly bullish; at the highs, quietly bearish. Order Flow flags it automatically, at the level it happens.

How it works

A dedicated worker reads the aggregated trade stream across venues, classifies each trade by aggressor side, and buckets it by timeframe, candle and price level. Absorption is detected when aggressive volume outweighs the passive side by more than 2× yet price barely moves. The whole thing renders in the browser — a full screen of roughly sixteen thousand cells in under 300 milliseconds — with delta updates so only what changed gets sent.

Part of the operating system

Order Flow works hand in hand with Liquidity Map: the map shows you where the clusters sit, Order Flow shows you how price interacts with them — an aggressive buy absorbed at support, or a sweep that breaks it. The same sweep and structure signals feed Market Intelligence, so what you see on the tape is what the engine votes on.

New to the concepts?Read: Reading Open Interest
See the tape, not just the candle

Open Order Flow on the live market

Footprint, depth heatmap and intelligence reports — included from the Pro plan upward.

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