The building blocks

Before going into detail, nail down the four notions everything else flows from. You will meet them again in every setup.

Two families of orders

• Passive orders (limits) wait for a price. They make up the liquidity. You see them in the DOM and on the heatmap.
• Aggressive orders (market orders) consume that liquidity and move the price. You see them in the footprint, the delta and the execution bubbles.

The two questions to ask at every level

1. Who is defending this price? Passive liquidity that holds and reloads (absorption, iceberg), or a wall that vanishes as price approaches (spoof)?
2. Who is attacking, and are they running out of steam? A delta that confirms the move, or a delta that diverges while price is still advancing?