Articles tagged "Order Book"

About this tag

The order book is the ledger underneath every price - a real-time snapshot of resting limit orders stacked at each level, bids below and asks above. It is static until it is not. New orders land, existing ones cancel, and the shape shifts continuously while the last traded price stays fixed on the screen. The chart compresses all of that into a single line; the book holds the structure that produced it.

The shape of the book is what this tag examines. Where size clusters and where it thins. A wall of resting bids at a round number that holds price for hours, then vanishes the moment it is tested. A depth chart that slopes gradually on one side and drops off sharply on the other, signaling asymmetric resistance. The difference between a book where the top five levels absorb a large order quietly and one where three filled levels expose open air beneath.

These notes stay focused on the visible resting structure - the bids and asks that are on the book before any trade happens. Not who placed them or why, not whether flow is informed or aggressive, but what the stacked shape looks like and how it changes. Bid stacking at a level, ask clustering above a swing high, thin zones where no one is willing to rest a limit, and the occasional book that shows obvious imbalance without a single trade printing.

The framing is observational. The book does not predict direction; it maps where liquidity is positioned. Notes here describe how that map reads at different market conditions - where depth accumulates, how quickly it withdraws, and what the shape around a level tends to mean before price arrives there.