Footprint modes and what they are for?

Footprint of the Time type includes 4 variants of the cluster display. This Footprint shows how many seconds the price stayed at each level. One unit is one second. It is convenient for traders to analyze what levels the price passed fast and at what levels it stopped, that is the impulse movements and consolidations are specified. This Footprint variant could also be interesting in the charts which are not connected to time – for example, range, reversal or tick.

The Footprint display is set in the upper menu. A side menu with Footprint variants appears after you select clusters. The settings are flexible and clear and do not require a big effort.

Footprint is not a trading system by itself. It helps traders to find regularities which come into action under certain market conditions. However, it is always necessary to take into account the context and receive confirmations.

The ‘p’ pattern warns after a local downward movement that sellers exit from their positions and buy with market orders. Thus, the seller can register profit, since it is necessary to buy for closing the open sell position. We may see the growth of the price and volume in the clusters with positive delta if the buys are executed by market orders. But it is always important to remember that a trade is executed when market buys meet limit sells. If these are new limit sell orders, perhaps, the price will continue to go down. If we consider this bar as a reversal one, it is necessary to wait for confirmation by the next bars.

In the event of an uptrend, this pattern confirms the movement strength since the volumes move together with the price.

Example. We marked ‘p’ bars, which confirm the price growth, with red numbers 1 and 2 in the 800-tick gold futures (GC) chart.

The ‘b’ pattern warns us after a local upward movement that buyers exit from their positions and sell with market orders. Profit is registered here. But again, it is important to remember that a trade is executed when market sells meet limit buys. And if these are new limit buy orders, perhaps the price would continue to grow. If we consider this pattern as a short-term reversal, it is necessary to wait for confirmation.

Such bars confirm the trend in the event of downward movement because the volumes move together with the price. We marked the ‘b’ bar, which appeared on top, in the example above with black number 3. Most probably, this is the profit registration.

Absorption is the formation of a huge volume without significant price movement. See example in the E-mini S&P 500 futures range chart (4) below.

There are more buys here than on the previous bars, but the price failed to move higher. The long shadow of the Delta in the lower part of the chart tells us that sellers won in this candle.

No demand is a gradual ‘drying out’ of the buying volume at the bars’ high after the uptrend. We marked this pattern with point 2 in the previous example. Buyers do not want to open long positions any more after the absorbed buys in point 1. The price should roll back from the absorption level to collect new buyers.

No supply is a similar pattern but at a new day’s low. In this situation there are no more traders who wish to sell and there are more and more buyers who reverse the local downtrend.