This is a market analysis method that reveals the flow of executed trades and available liquidity in the order book: who is buying, who is selling, where volume is concentrated, and how the opposing side responds. Unlike traditional chart analysis, Order Flow shows market activity in real time — not after the move has already happened.
Order flow analysis allows you to analyze participants' intentions in the order book — before the move takes shape on the chart
Market orders are trades executed here and now at the best available price. When these orders consume available liquidity at the current level, the price moves to the next one.
Limit orders are placed by traders who want to enter at more favorable prices. These orders wait at predefined levels, adding liquidity to the order book and acting as barriers to price movement.
Levels with large concentrations of limit orders often become support or resistance zones. If the liquidity is genuine and strong enough, the price may slow down, stall, or reverse at these levels.
Order Flow reveals market behavior that remains invisible on a regular chart. Here are three core scenarios — a solid starting point for analysis.
Market orders hit a dense liquidity wall, where a large passive participant absorbs the incoming flow. Volume at the level increases, but the price stalls or pulls back.
In analysis: Potential reversal or a strong range boundary
Where to look: Footprint, Heatmap, Smart DOM
The volume of aggressive orders gradually fades. Each new candle within the trend forms with lower volume, showing that the impulse is losing strength. If liquidity ahead remains untouched, the movement eventually runs out of momentum.
In analysis: Potential reversal or deep correction
Where to look: Footprint, Speed of Tape, CVD Pro
One side of the market takes clear control: aggressive buying or selling significantly outweighs the available counter-liquidity. The price moves through levels quickly, with little or no resistance.
In analysis: Directional impulse or the start of a new move
Where to look: Footprint (imbalances), Heatmap, Big Trades
Order Flow tools help solve three tasks:
In ATAS, each task has its own group of tools.
What exactly happened at each price level inside the candle? Who was in control — buyers or sellers? Did abnormal volume appear at a key level? ATAS analytical tools break down each candle and reveal the distribution of executed trades, vertical volume, and the balance of power in full detail.
Market orders move the price. ATAS helps you see who initiates the move, how aggressive the activity is, and how much pressure stands behind it.
Purpose: Quickly detect large-volume trades.
Imagine a large participant sends a market order for 200 contracts. The exchange splits this order across nearby liquidity levels: 15, 8, 42, 17 contracts, and so on. In the tape, this often appears as scattered small trades, making it difficult to distinguish institutional activity from retail flow.
Big Trades reconstructs the original executed volume and marks it directly on the chart. Instead of dozens of fragments, you see the complete large trade and the exact level where it occurred.
Adaptive Big Trades goes one step further by analyzing historical volatility over a selected period and automatically adjusting the threshold for anomalous volume.
Volume reconstruction is one of the core principles behind ATAS. The same logic powers Smart Tape, where reconstructed trades are displayed in a structured table format.
Tape Patterns extends this concept even further by detecting recurring sequences among reconstructed trades — identical sizes, repeating intervals, and other patterns that may reveal algorithmic activity rather than organic market flow.
Purpose: Real-time analysis of buyer/seller pressure and price movement intensity.
Market Pressure tracks all executed trades and calculates buyer and seller pressure in real time using exponential decay logic. The tool operates in two modes:
Price Change measures the intensity of price movement on a normalized scale from –100 to +100, adjusted to the instrument’s current volatility. This allows you to evaluate not just raw movement, but how abnormal the current activity is relative to normal market conditions.
Purpose: Analyze Best Bid and Best Ask dynamics in real time using a chart format.
The chart is built directly from changes in the best Bid and Ask prices — the exact point where aggressive market activity interacts with available liquidity.
Unlike traditional charts, a new candle forms not at fixed time intervals but whenever the best buy or sell price changes.
The height of each candle equals the current spread, making moments of thin liquidity and sharp market shifts immediately visible. Technical indicators and graphical tools can also be applied to turn raw order flow into measurable analytical data.
✓ On illiquid instruments, the chart may temporarily freeze if Bid and Ask prices don’t change. The Order Flow Chart does not simulate activity when there is no real competition between buyers and sellers.
Purpose: Analyze the tape directly on the chart.
Each executed trade is displayed as an individual geometric marker, with its size representing the volume traded. In real time, you can see:
The same visualization principle is also available inside Smart DOM through a dedicated order book column.
Purpose: Analyze market activity and execution dynamics.
Speed of Tape measures the pace of trade execution and highlights candles where activity is significantly above or below normal. For example, a sudden acceleration in execution speed may signal either exhaustion at the end of a move or the beginning of a new impulsive phase.
Analysis of executed trades shows what has already happened. Liquidity analysis shows what may happen next: where large limit orders are resting, how they react as the price approaches, and where the market is likely to move more easily.
Volume analysis is a broad term that includes everything related to trading volume: volume profiles, vertical volume, delta, accumulation, distribution, and other volume-based concepts.
Order Flow is a branch of volume analysis focused specifically on real-time market activity: who is entering the market right now, with what volume, and how liquidity responds. If traditional volume analysis answers “where”, Order Flow explains “who” and “how.”
Footprint is one of the tools used to visualize Order Flow. It breaks down a standard candle and displays executed volume at every price level inside it.
But Order Flow analysis goes beyond Footprint charts alone. It also includes: tape analysis (Smart Tape), order book analysis (DOM), liquidity tracking, and market microstructure analysis in real time.
ATAS supports cryptocurrencies, futures, and stocks.
Order Flow tools work across all supported markets. The analytical principles remain the same — only liquidity characteristics differ from instrument to instrument.
Liquidity quality also varies by market:
Yes. Smart DOM and DOM Trader combine analysis and independent order management within a single interface. You can place and manage limit orders, stop orders, and stop strategies directly from the chart or order book without switching to a separate terminal.
Yes. After installing ATAS, you automatically receive the free Start plan with no time limit. It includes basic Order Flow analysis tools and connectivity to crypto exchanges. To unlock the full feature set, you can activate a 14-day trial or subscribe to one of the paid plans, which provide access to advanced indicators and modules.
The main difference lies in the level of autonomy and the depth of visualization.
DOM Trader and DOM Levels include a built-in Heatmap integrated into the order book interface. This setup is convenient for scalping, but the Heatmap remains part of the DOM module rather than an independent analytical environment.
The new Heatmap is a standalone module with its own rendering engine and expanded functionality.
At the same time, the Heatmap in DOM Trader and DOM Levels remains fully functional and can be used alongside the new module. For traders focused on fast execution and scalping within a single window, DOM Trader remains highly practical.
Start with a minimal setup:
These three elements are enough to see where aggressive market activity collides with passive liquidity.
Disable unnecessary panels at first. Reducing visual noise makes core Order Flow scenarios much easier to recognize.
You can also start with the Heatmap — its interface is more intuitive than a multifunctional DOM.
It can become overwhelming if you try to analyze everything at once. The best approach is to start with one tool and one recurring setup. Choose the concept that feels most intuitive to you: absorption, exhaustion, or imbalance. Even reviewing one or two repeated scenarios per day helps develop the ability to filter noise and focus on meaningful market behavior. Once these patterns become familiar, you can gradually add more tools and move deeper into volume analysis.
Start with the free ATAS plan to access the core tools without time restrictions.
At the same time, explore the Quick Start materials:
You can also discuss real chart situations with other traders inside the Telegram and Discord communities.
Start working with the order flow in real time — to analyze the orders, volumes and balance of power behind every candle
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