Order flow glossary
Plain definitions of the vocabulary order flow traders actually use — each one with a worked example, and the mistake it usually causes. 35 terms and counting.
A
- Absorption — heavy aggression met by a larger passive side, with no displacement — effort without result
- Anchored VWAP — a VWAP started from a chosen event rather than the session boundary
- Auction Market Theory — the market read as a two-way auction searching for prices where business gets done
C
- Cumulative volume delta (CVD) — the running sum of delta across a session — the dominant camp over time, minus the location
D
- Delta — volume executed at the ask minus volume executed at the bid — net aggression, not direction
- Delta divergence — price making a new extreme that delta or cumulative delta does not confirm
- Depth of market (DOM) — the resting limit orders at each price right now — a menu of promises, not facts
E
- Exhaustion — a move stalling because the aggression driving it dries up, not because anything blocks it
F
- Fair Value Gap (SMC) — a three-candle price gap treated as an inefficiency the market should return to
- Footprint chart — a candle opened up to show volume executed at the bid and at the ask, price by price
- Footprint imbalance — a diagonal comparison of buying at one price against selling at the price below, flagged past a ratio
H
- High volume node (HVN) — a bulge in the profile where the auction completed — a magnet, never a barrier
I
- Iceberg order — a limit order showing only a fraction of its size, replenishing after each fill
- Initial Balance — the high and low of the first hour of the regular session, and the frame the rest of the day extends from
L
- Liquidity heatmap — resting limit orders drawn on a price-by-time grid — the book's visual memory
- Liquidity sweep / stop run — a brief push through a level where stops rest, filling them and often reversing
- Low volume node (LVN) — a pinch in the profile where the auction was cut short — crossed fast, or rejected cleanly
M
- Market by Order (MBO) — every individual resting order with its own identifier and its place in the queue
- Market Profile — price and time organised into a distribution of letters, one per half-hour a price traded
N
- Naked point of control — a past session's point of control price has never returned to test — a target, not a support
O
- Order Block (SMC) — the last opposite candle before an impulse, marked as a zone and assumed to be institutional
- Order book (CLOB) — the exchange's ranked list of resting limit orders at every price
- Order flow trading — reading executed transactions and resting orders instead of only the shape of the candle
P
- Point of control (POC / VPOC) — the price with the most traded volume in a profile — a magnet, not a wall
- Poor High / Poor Low — a flat profile extreme with no excess, the sign of an auction that stopped without finishing
S
- Single Print — a price touched by only one TPO period — excess at the profile's extremes, a thin shelf inside it
- Spoofing (and layering) — orders entered with the intention of cancelling them before execution — illegal, and prosecuted
- Stacked imbalances — three or more consecutive footprint imbalances on the same side, marking a price band one side pushed through without pausing
- Stopping volume — a burst of aggression absorbed as it arrives, halting a directional leg — maximum effort, no result
T
- Tape reading — reading the stream of executed trades — the receipt, not the intentions
- TPO (Time Price Opportunity) — one mark showing that a price traded during one half-hour bracket — a measure of time, not volume
- Trapped traders — participants caught on the wrong side of a failed break, whose exit stops fuel the move against them
V
- Value area (VAH / VAL) — the contiguous band holding ~70% of a period's volume, bounded by VAH and VAL
- Volume profile — a horizontal histogram of volume traded at each price over a chosen window
- VWAP — the volume-weighted average price since a reset, used as a dynamic reference for fair value