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The FDAX trades in full points at EUR 25 a tick, where the Nasdaq trades in quarter points at USD 5. The same economic volume therefore spreads across nearly five times fewer price levels: the book is compressed, each step carries more size, and absorption becomes unambiguous because a participant no longer has enough levels to hide in. The obstacle is not the market, it is access to Eurex depth.
Level 2, from the EMDI feed, gives aggregated depth per price level: "340 lots at 26,350". MBO, from the T7 EOBI feed, gives the book order by order: how many orders make up those 340 lots, which one was just cancelled, which one was refilled. Icebergs, pulls and refills are invisible in aggregate, so a heatmap fed with Level 2 carries no real informational value.
It is a loss floor that rises with your gains and never comes back down. In its intraday form it recalculates off the peak unrealized balance: open profit alone permanently raises the level at which the account closes. The consequence for order flow, whose edge is entering early: favourable excursion gets billed, so the early entry costs you room. In the end-of-day form, only the settled balance counts.
Yes, and it is the typical scenario under intraday trailing. On a $50,000 account with a $2,500 threshold, an entry that runs to $1,000 of open profit fixes the floor at $48,500 permanently; a disciplined exit at +$160 leaves $1,660 of room instead of $2,500. Every dollar banked cost five dollars of lifespan. Repeated four times, the account closes with a rising balance.
Divide the remaining room by the number of contracts times the point value. With $1,660 of room on 2 NQ at $20 per point: 1,660 ÷ 40 = 41.5 points below the entry price. That is the real hard stop, the one the firm chose. With 2 MNQ at $2 per point, the same room gives 415 points. The level recalculates after every closed trade and gets drawn on the chart.
Because SPX options are cash-settled: their underlying is not deliverable. The market maker who sells them must hedge delta in an instrument tracking the same index, deep and margin-efficient, the ES future. The arithmetic is exact: an SPX option's multiplier is $100 per point versus $50 for the ES, so an option hedged at delta 1.00 corresponds to two ES contracts.
It is the price at which estimated net dealer gamma changes sign. Above it, their hedging is counter-trend and compresses volatility; below it, it is pro-trend and amplifies it. It is the most useful level of the day because it determines whether a mean-reversion or a continuation approach has flow on its side, and therefore whether absorption spotted in the book will hold or get run over.
The timescale. Same-day options represent around 65% of SPX volume, nearly 3.1 million contracts a day (Cboe, as of May 2026). Their gamma concentrates violently near the money then disappears into the close: the resulting hedging plays out inside the session, on the same timescale as order flow, instead of spreading over weeks like a monthly expiry.
Yes. Partner link OFF applies the best discount currently running on the DeepCharts license, up to -20% as of 8 September 2026, on DeepChart as well as DeepDom. It applies automatically when you follow the link, there is no code field in their checkout. The discount covers the software license, not the data feed or MBO depth, which are billed separately.
DeepCharts is a futures order-flow platform published by deepcharts.com. It combines a footprint chart (DeepChart) and an order-book liquidity heatmap (DeepDom), both fed by order-by-order MBO data. It covers the CME complex and Eurex, connecting through Rithmic, CQG or dxFeed.
The license runs from $59/month (Orderflow) to $100/month (Pro, down from $125), with Full Advanced at $79/month. On top of it: the data feed, from $19/month with dxFeed or $57/month with Rithmic, and MBO depth, $39/month on the CME plus $65/month for Eurex. Around $200/month all in. Checked 8 September 2026.
DeepGamma is the gamma-exposure and option-flow module of DeepCharts. It renders market-maker gamma exposure (GEX Profile, GEX Heatmap, Gamma Bands) and option flow inside the same chart as futures order flow. Classic ships with the Full Advanced plan, the full suite with the Pro plan.
GEX is the net gamma exposure of market makers on an index's options. In positive GEX they buy dips and sell rallies, dampening volatility; in negative GEX they do the opposite and amplify moves. That hedging spills into the ES future.
DeepGamma comes in two tiers: Classic ships with the DeepChart Full Advanced plan ($79/month, $948 billed yearly), and the full suite (GEX Heatmap, large option flows, replayable Cboe history) with the Pro plan ($100/month down from $125). The Orderflow plan ($59/mo) does not include the gamma tools. Checked 8 September 2026.
Yes, as context. Market makers selling SPX options hedge in the ES future: that flow is obligatory and lands on the contract. GEX shows where it should concentrate, not price direction: the entry is still decided by reading order flow.
DeepDom is the order-book and heatmap module of DeepCharts. It shows resting liquidity order by order (MBO), refreshed every 0.01 second, with iceberg detection and stop-run detection. It is the tool we use to read liquidity walls before they move.
In MBP (Market By Price) you see a total per price level: 300 lots, with no idea who makes them up. In MBO (Market By Order) every order in the book is visible individually, so one large player is distinguishable from thirty small ones. That is what DeepCharts shows.
You read three things: dense zones, where liquidity piles up and slows price; walls that keep refilling, a sign of genuine absorption; and walls that vanish as price approaches, a sign of spoofing. Colour encodes size, the horizontal axis encodes time.
A footprint opens each candle price by price and splits volume executed at market on the bid from volume executed on the ask. You read delta, imbalances and absorption points: who attacks and who absorbs, where a classic candle only shows the outcome.
Start with a single liquid instrument, NQ or ES, and a single read: delta and absorption at range extremes. Add the liquidity heatmap only once you read the footprint correctly. Tick-by-tick replay lets you train on real sessions without putting capital at risk.
Four venues cover most of it. Eurex, inside Deutsche Börse near Frankfurt, lists the DAX 40 future and the German bond complex. Euronext Derivatives covers national index and single-stock products from Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Lisbon, Oslo and Milan. ICE Futures Europe, in London, holds energy and European rates. Cboe Europe Derivatives, launched in Amsterdam in 2021, lists pan-European contracts.
Three practical points. Tick value: 25 EUR on the FDAX against 5 USD on the NQ, so the same stop in points carries five times the risk. Hours: the DAX trades on European time, the Nasdaq on American time. Funding: nearly every prop firm covers the CME and very few cover Eurex, which is what keeps the FDAX book far less crowded.
Yes. Eurex publishes MBO depth on the FDAX, which allows the same order-by-order read as on the CME. DeepCharts displays it with a Eurex depth subscription, billed around $65/month on top of the base feed. Few platforms offer it.
Not for everything. The build a prop firm bundles does not unlock the full indicator set of the complete license. To get every tool, including full MBO depth on the order book, you need your own license, discounted up to 20% with code OFF.
The decisive criterion is not the evaluation price but platform compatibility and drawdown rules. You need a firm that allows a DeepCharts connector (Rithmic or CQG) and a drawdown wide enough to hold a flow scalp. Our comparison details those rules firm by firm.
An iceberg is a large order sliced into small pieces: the book shows 20 lots, yet 500 trade at that price without the level giving way. In MBO you see the slice refill after each execution. DeepDom isolates that behavior automatically.
Absorption is aggressive volume executing without moving price: buyers hit the offer, the offer takes it and the level holds. It is a more reliable reversal signal than high volume alone, because it shows a passive player accepting the entire flow.
Delta is the difference between volume executed at market on the ask and on the bid over a period. Cumulated, it gives CVD. A divergence, price rising while CVD falls, signals the move is carried by passive orders, not by buy aggression.
Few tools read the book order by order: Bookmap, Sierra Chart with the right module, Quantower and DeepCharts. We work on DeepCharts for the footprint-plus-heatmap combination in a single license and for Eurex MBO depth, which is rare on the FDAX.
DeepCharts connects through Rithmic, CQG or dxFeed. The base feed provides executions; an MBO read additionally requires a depth subscription billed by the exchange: about $39/month for the CME and $65/month for Eurex. Without depth there is no order-by-order heatmap.
OFF is the OrderFlowFutures partner code. It unlocks two independent discounts: at prop firm Phidias it is entered at checkout and automatically triggers the best discount currently running; at DeepCharts it gives the best available discount on the platform license. One code to remember for both costs a futures trader faces.
Two partner codes cover our two tested firms. At Phidias, OFF is entered at checkout and applies the best discount running on the product you picked, renewals and resets included. At MyFundedFutures, VIPLAD travels inside the link and the discount field arrives pre-filled. Other firms run their own codes.
Three levers, in this order: apply a promo code at checkout, which often cuts 50 to 80% of the price; pick a one-time-payment account over a monthly subscription if the evaluation may drag on; and size your risk to avoid paying for a reset.
A prop firm funds traders: you pay for an evaluation, prove you can hit profit targets without breaching a drawdown, then trade a funded account and keep 80 to 90% of the profits. The capital at risk stays the firm's, not yours.
An EOD drawdown recomputes on the closing balance: intraday gains do not lift the limit, so giving back a winner will not eliminate you. An intraday trailing drawdown follows the session high and punishes any pullback. For flow scalping, EOD is far more workable.
The evaluation is a real cost, not refunded if you fail, and most candidates do fail. The upside is still real: a few dozen euros buy access to capital you would not put up yourself. Treat it as a risky investment, not as guaranteed income.
OrderFlowFutures publishes free French guides on footprint charts, liquidity heatmaps and prop firms, a journal of annotated NQ, ES and FDAX sessions, and runs a French-speaking Discord community. Every read is done on DeepCharts and DeepDom.
For a futures trader who reads order flow, yes, with two caveats. DeepCharts bundles the footprint, the MBO liquidity heatmap and a gamma module in one license, $59 to $100 a month. The caveats: no native macOS build, so on a Mac it runs inside Parallels Desktop, and a three-part budget (license, data feed, MBO depth) to count in full, around $200 a month. Checked 8 September 2026.
Both display a liquidity heatmap. Bookmap remains the historical reference; DeepCharts bundles the footprint (DeepChart) and the MBO order book (DeepDom) in a single license, and covers Eurex depth on the FDAX, which few tools do. Our community works on DeepCharts: going through our partner link applies whatever discount is running, on its own, with no code to enter.
Spoofing means posting large orders with no intention of executing them, to fake pressure, then canceling as price approaches. The practice is banned on regulated markets. On an MBO heatmap, a wall that repeatedly vanishes as price gets close betrays that behavior: the opposite of genuine absorption.
A stop run is a fast push into a zone where stops cluster, below an obvious low, above a high, to trigger their execution and take the liquidity. Price often snaps straight back into the range. On the heatmap, the targeted zone shows up as the liquidity resting around those levels.
For learning, yes: OrderFlowFutures publishes a free interactive heatmap demo that simulates order walls, icebergs, spoofing and stop runs to practise the read. In live conditions MBO data is paid: the exchange bills it (about $39/month on the CME), whatever software you use.
An iceberg order is a large limit order of which only a small slice is visible in the book. Each time the slice is filled, it reloads at the same price, until the total quantity is exhausted. The goal is to execute large size without revealing the intention. On screen, an iceberg looks like a small order that refuses to disappear.
A native iceberg is managed by the exchange: on CME Globex the reload modifies the same order, the ID is preserved and the fresh slice goes to the back of the queue. Detection is deterministic. A synthetic iceberg is managed by execution software: each slice is a fresh order, and detection is statistical, typically an order reposted at the same price within a second. Eurex derivatives have no native iceberg type.
Yes. The iceberg is an official order type, documented and offered by the exchanges themselves, precisely to let large size execute without being picked apart. It must not be confused with spoofing, which is illegal: a spoofer displays orders they have no intention of executing, an iceberg hides orders it firmly intends to execute. One lies about its intention, the other only about its size.
The best public study, run by Devexperts on the complete order-by-order flow of the ES in June 2019, measures 4% of volume for native icebergs (0.06% of orders) and 3.3 to 14.3% for synthetics depending on the detection threshold, a total on the order of 7 to 18% of traded volume. The figures are dated, but that order of magnitude remains the only published reference.
Effort is the aggressive volume executed, result is the distance price travels. The law comes from Richard Wyckoff in the 1930s: when effort and result agree, the move continues; when they diverge, a change of direction becomes likely. In modern order flow, effort is measured on order-by-order data, with the aggressor side declared by the exchange.
Two very different reasons. The first is structural: market impact is concave, so ten times the volume produces only about four times the move, which makes lots of volume for little price the normal state. The second is situational: a passive counterparty is absorbing the aggression at the same price, often with hidden size that reloads. Only comparison with the market's recent baseline separates the two.
Delta is a balance, aggressive buying minus aggressive selling. Effort is a total, buying plus selling. A level where 1,200 contracts are bought and 1,150 sold shows a delta of +50, meaningless, while 2,350 contracts fought each other. Delta gives direction, effort gives intensity, and only effort is compared with the result.
No. Market impact studies measure a concave relationship, with an exponent between 0.5 and 0.6 depending on the study. Doubling volume produces about one and a half times the move, multiplying it by ten produces about four times. This is why no absolute threshold such as a thousand contracts with no movement means anything out of context.
It is the opposite. A move obtained on little aggressive volume indicates a thin book, not powerful buyers. Price slid across a void, no level was created along the way, and the move replays in reverse on the same small effort. These episodes cluster around macro releases, session handovers and rollover periods.
No. On CME Globex as on Eurex, a stop order is held by the exchange's matching engine and only enters the book once triggered by a trade at the stop price. Order-by-order data (MBO) rebuilds resting limit orders, never stops. A stop-run detector therefore does not see stops, it sees their consequences: a fast, one-sided burst of aggression that moves price.
It becomes an aggressor. CME specifies that once triggered, a stop order is treated as an aggressor limit order, and its fill notices reflect that. A sell stop hits the bid like any other market sell; on a footprint, nothing separates it from a decided sale. The difference is read in the shape of the burst: one-sided, within a few hundred milliseconds, into a book that is empty beyond the level.
Because everyone places them in the same logical spots. The only published study on real orders, Carol Osler's on 9,655 orders from an FX dealing desk between 1999 and 2000, finds that almost 10% of conditional orders target a rate ending in 00, that stop-loss sells cluster just below round numbers and stop-loss buys just above them, and that crossing a round number extends the move for about two hours.
It is the same phenomenon under two vocabularies. Liquidity sweep or liquidity grab describes the path of price: an excursion beyond an obvious level followed by a return. Stop run names the mechanism: the stops resting beyond the level trigger and become market orders. In order flow, what gets measured is the mechanism: a burst of forced, one-sided aggression into a thin book, then the absence of a relay.
It pauses the market. CME Globex's Stop Logic Functionality places the instrument in a reserved state of 5 to 10 seconds if elected stops would produce executions beyond pre-defined thresholds; during the pause no orders are matched, but limit orders can be entered, modified and cancelled. On 6 May 2010 the mechanism fired at 1:45:28 pm on the E-mini S&P, after a cascade from 1062 to 1056, for five seconds.
OFF is the OrderFlowFutures partner code at Phidias. Entered at checkout, it automatically applies the best discount currently running on the product you picked, whether that is a monthly challenge, an Express to Live, a one-time-payment account or the 10K Challenge. It is free and adds no extra fee.
Phidias builds DeepCharts right into its dashboard, reachable from the browser, desktop and mobile with nothing to install. Order flow and heatmap reading are available from the evaluation onward, with no separate license and no paid data feed option. Code OFF entered at checkout applies the best current discount.
Almost every futures prop firm stops at CME. Phidias is one of the very few opening Eurex, so the FDAX and the Mini-DAX, with DeepCharts built in to read the DAX book. For a trader working the European session it is currently one of the only routes to a funded account on that market.
At Phidias the whole range runs on end-of-day or static drawdown, never intraday trailing. In practice, a position that runs far in your favour before coming back does not lift your loss threshold during the session. That is a structural difference for order flow, where you often let a trade run before exiting on absorption.
Yes. Code OFF is entered at every checkout, not just on the first purchase. It applies to a monthly subscription renewal, an account reset or an extra evaluation just as it does to a first order. The useful habit is to paste it at every checkout, since the discount never carries over automatically.
Fundamental is the standard evaluation. Premium adds a fast pass, quicker payouts, overnight and weekend positions, and a progressive split climbing to 100%. Express to Live flips to a LIVE account on the first payout. The 10K Challenge is the cheapest entry format. Code OFF applies the best current discount on each of them.
Monthly costs less upfront but adds an activation fee when you get funded, and renews for as long as the evaluation lasts. One-time payment costs more at once and leaves nothing to pay afterwards. If you expect to pass over several weeks, one-time payment is often cheaper overall. Either way, code OFF applies the best current discount.
You need two things at once: Eurex access, which is rare among prop firms, and a tool able to display the order book heatmap. Phidias brings both together, with the FDAX and Mini-DAX on one side, DeepCharts and DeepDom built in on the other. Code OFF at evaluation checkout applies the best current discount.
The Express to Live path at Phidias flips to a LIVE account on the first payout, and can be completed in 48 hours for a trader who passes quickly. That is faster than the usual evaluation, then simulated account, then move to real money sequence. Code OFF entered at checkout lowers the cost of that path.
On October 4, 2026. DeepCharts shows the date and a countdown on its event page, and has opened a signup that grants 14 days of real CBOE gamma exposure data. The form asks for first name, last name and email, with no card. What the web version costs after the trial is not announced.
By claiming a spot before the October 4, 2026 launch: signing up to the DeepCharts list grants 14 days of real CBOE GEX data, with no card required. It is a launch offer rather than a permanent trial, and it says nothing about pricing afterwards. Outside that window, DeepGamma ships with the Full Advanced and Pro plans.
CBOE tags every SPX option trade with a participant category, so you know which side of the contract the market maker sits on, and gamma exposure is computed from facts. OPRA gives you the trades without that tag, so the side of each ticket has to be guessed through a proprietary formula. The first is measured, the second estimated.
Ten sessions are enough to answer one question: does the gamma context change a decision you already make? Three days writing down call wall, put wall and flip level without trading, four comparing a session above the flip with one below it, four on option flow, three counting the trades you skipped or held.
VIPLAD is the OrderFlowFutures partner code at MyFundedFutures, tied to referral 5353. The link drops it into the discount field for you, then the best public discount in force applies to the order on its own, 50% off the whole range as of 23 September 2026.
At 50K both plans cost $209 and pay 90% of profits. The difference lands after you pass: Rapid switches the drawdown to real time once the account is funded, Rapid EOD keeps it end of day, in exchange for 30% consistency, four minimum trading days and three contracts instead of five.
MyFundedFutures lists DeepChart and DeepDom among its platforms and connects them through the account dxFeed credentials, which the firm emails you. In the startup wizard you pick dxFeed as the feed source and Propfirm as the server. The build the firm hands you does not unlock every indicator.
The first withdrawal request opens after one day on the Rapid and Rapid EOD plans, two days on Builder and fourteen days on Pro. It covers whatever sits above the safety buffer, which is one hundred dollars above the account maximum loss. Checked 23 September 2026.
It caps the share of total profit a single day may represent. The Rapid and Pro plans set it at 50%, Rapid EOD at 30%, and Builder has none at all. One exceptional session therefore blocks nothing on a Builder, where elsewhere it can delay a pass.
Builder is the least constrained of the range: no consistency rule, a single minimum trading day, and the cheapest entry at $105 for 25K before the discount in force. Its drawdown stays end of day, during the evaluation and once funded alike.
Phidias builds DeepCharts into the dashboard with nothing to install, and carries no intraday trailing drawdown: its code OFF is entered at checkout. MyFundedFutures pays from the next day on the Rapid plans and connects DeepCharts through the account dxFeed feed: its code VIPLAD travels inside the link.
No, and the causality actually runs the other way. The POC is the price where the market traded most, so where it stayed most: the level is produced by time spent, it does not produce it. The POC of a closed period stays a reference because many participants watch it at the same price, which makes it a meeting point, not a magnet.
Yes, on a double distribution session. The value area widens from the POC until it covers 70% of the volume; with two volume clusters separated by a thin band, it has to cross that band to get there. So it encloses prices that barely traded, and VWAP, a weighted average, lands between the two clusters, which is inside the gap.
Market Profile, developed by J. Peter Steidlmayer and released by the CBOT from 1985, counts time: one letter, a TPO, per price touched in each half hour bracket. The volume profile counts contracts in the same place. The two peaks separate as soon as a brief auction settles a lot of volume.
The POC of a closed period is fixed: it will not move again and everyone sees it at the same price, which makes it a solid reference. The live session's POC is a statistic in the making, recalculated with every burst of volume, which DeepCharts shows through its Develop mode. The first is traded, the second is read like a thermometer.
A valley marks a price the market crossed without finding counterparty: it is the trace of an absence of orders, not of a zone of orders. On a revisit, price can move through it fast again. Confirm it against the present book with a liquidity heatmap, since the profile only describes the past book.
A standard candle tells you four things: open, high, low, close. The footprint opens the candle and shows the volume actually traded at each price, split between aggressive buying (at the ask) and aggressive selling (at the bid). It's the difference between seeing that price moved and seeing why it moved.
The footprint shows what was executed; the heatmap shows what is waiting to be. It turns the book into a picture: every resting limit order, colored by size, stacked over time. You see liquidity walls form, hold or vanish before price reacts to them.
Delta is the difference between volume executed as aggressive buying (at the ask) and aggressive selling (at the bid) over a period. Positive, buyers dominate; negative, sellers. CVD (cumulative delta) sums that balance over time into a pressure curve.
An iceberg order is a large order a player doesn't want to show: it's displayed in small slices that reload on each fill, to hide its true size. To the naked eye you only see a small order that 'refuses to disappear.'
An imbalance appears when aggressive volume on one side vastly outweighs the opposite side at the adjacent price: typically a 3-to-1 ratio or more, diagonally. It signals one side taking control with force; stacked, they form a 'stacked imbalance,' a continuation signal.
The tape is the stream of trades scrolling by. Speed of Tape measures its pace: how many executions per second, and at what intensity. A calm market ticks trades off; a market under tension fires them in bursts. Volume says how much; speed says with what urgency.
Not every execution carries the same weight: a 200-lot print doesn't mean the same thing as a handful of retail trades. Spotting large activity, the players who actually move the market, is at the heart of reading order flow.
The DOM (Depth of Market, or order book) is the vertical price ladder that shows, at each level, the size of resting limit orders on the buy and sell sides. It's the rawest view of liquidity: the one where tick-precise timing plays out.
A Fair Value Gap (FVG) is a 'skipped' price zone: when the market moves so fast it leaves a hole in the structure, typically an impulse candle whose body creates a gap between the preceding and following candles. It's a price where trading was lopsided, an inefficiency.
Most trend indicators are computed on past price and lag the market. The idea behind Deep-M Effort is to judge trend by the real effort injected into the flow, the aggression that pushes (or doesn't) price, to tell a genuine impulse from a mere drift.
The volume profile flips the view: instead of volume over time, it shows volume by price. It surfaces the POC (point of control, the most-traded price), the value area (where most trading happened) and low-volume gaps. These are the reference levels the market likes to revisit.
You don't improve at order flow without repetition. Deep Replay replays past market exactly as it happened, every order and every liquidity change, to the tick and the second, to train your reading of the flow without risking a cent.
Every trader ends up spotting recurring setups ('when X and Y happen together, price does Z'). The hard part is objectifying them: is it a real edge or an illusion? Deep Pattern Builder is for turning those intuitions into rules and testing them on history.
A stop run (or stop hunt) is a fast sweep of liquidity beyond an obvious level, designed to trigger the stops piled there, then often reverse. Retail gets stopped out at the worst moment; big players collect the liquidity thus released.
The Opening Range Breakout rests on a simple idea: the first minutes of the regular session set a range, and leaving that range often sets the tone for the day. The concept was never the problem, measurement was. Where do you put the target, when is a break credible, when do you give up? Deep-M IVB answers those with historical statistics instead of an invented rule.
Aggression at market says nothing on its own. What matters is its rhythm: is it accelerating, slowing, exhausting itself?, and what it runs into. Deep V-Tracker splits those two questions into two explicit modules instead of blending them into a single indicator.
A liquidity wall is passive size resting at a price that refuses to move despite the aggression hitting it. When that refusal is clean and repeated, it often gives away an iceberg: a large order of which only a fraction is visible in the book. Deep Wall looks for exactly that signature: the rejection, not the displayed size.
The volume profile answers one question: at which prices did the market actually trade? But its histogram eats part of the chart, and intraday you really only use a handful of its values. Deep Profile Values sorts that out: it plots the levels and drops the drawing.
A volume profile tells you at which prices the market traded. It does not tell you who was aggressive. Deep Profile fixes that by offering several profiles on the same axis: total volume, ask against bid, delta, or delta and volume side by side. You move from a question of participation to a question of conviction.
A volume profile cut by day or by hour imposes a rhythm on the market that is not its own. A move does not start at midnight: it starts when it starts. Deep Profile Swing anchors the profile to the swing rather than the calendar, and gives you volume distribution inside the move itself.
Options do not spread evenly: activity concentrates on a few strikes, and those strikes become reference points because market makers have to hedge around them. The Option Profile puts that distribution next to price, like a volume profile but built on options activity rather than futures transactions.
When a market maker sells an option they aren't betting on direction: they hedge by buying or selling futures. Gamma measures how fast that hedge must be readjusted. The GEX Profile stacks this exposure strike by strike, like a volume profile: the call wall above, the put wall below, and the zero-gamma level separating the two regimes.
The GEX Profile is a photograph: exposure at one moment. The heatmap is the film. It paints colored blocks on the price chart at each level: cool tones where dealers are long gamma at that price, their hedging dampens the move, warm tones where they are short gamma, their hedging amplifies it. Color intensity gives the strength of the exposure.
Gamma Bands turn gamma exposure into a pair of boundaries drawn around price. While the market trades inside them, dealer hedging works against the move: it absorbs. When a boundary gives way, the same mechanic flips and starts pushing in the direction of the break. The band isn't a magic level: it's the frontier between two volatility regimes.
A large option flow leaves a trace before the index moves. Option Big Flows marks trades whose premium exceeds a threshold you set, one million dollars by default, with a simple visual language: shape says call or put, fill says opening or closing a position, color says buy or sell. You watch institutional tickets print alongside your futures order flow.
Option prices contain a forecast: the move the market expects out to a given expiration. Expected Move turns it into a band around price. It isn't a direction call, it's an order of magnitude: the distance the market currently considers normal, beyond which a move becomes statistically unusual.
The order book holds two different pieces of information: where the resting orders sit, and how much size they carry in total. The heatmap answers the first question beautifully and the second one poorly, because the eye is bad at comparing two clouds of colour. Deep Liquidity Scan aggregates the passive liquidity resting on the bid and on the ask across a chosen depth, plots both as curves, and adds their net difference. You move from a picture to a measurement.
In an order book, large resting orders move constantly: posted, pulled, posted again. That back and forth is invisible on a standard chart and unreadable by eye on a scrolling DOM. Deep Reload watches the book in real time and marks the moments when a significant amount of fresh liquidity reappears in a narrow price band around the market after being pulled. That is the signature of a participant holding a view and redeploying rather than abandoning the level.
Reading the tape in a scrolling window takes a level of focus nobody holds for six hours. The problem is not the data, it is the format: a chronological list forces you to remember where each execution happened. Volume Bubbles put every execution back in its place on the chart, sized to its volume and coloured by the side that was aggressed, blue for a market buy executed at the ask, pink for a market sell executed at the bid. Reading becomes spatial instead of sequential.
The Initial Balance is one of the rare session structures that has held for decades: the first hour of the regular session concentrates a large share of the volume, and the boundaries it leaves become reference points the market revisits. Session Imbalance plots those boundaries automatically, the high and low of the initial period, their midpoint, then extensions at fifty and one hundred percent above and below. You get seven lines that structure the rest of the day without measuring anything by hand.
A standard average treats every candle equally, including the ones where almost nothing traded. VWAP weights each price by the volume traded at that price: it gives the real average price of activity, the one executions clustered around. Envelopes add dispersion: bands computed in standard deviations around the line, turning a vague question, is price expensive, into a measurement, price is this many standard deviations from its volume weighted mean.
Almost every blown account is blown after the limit, not before: the day goes badly, the personal rule breaks, and size doubles to make it back. A risk manager moves the decision out of the moment when you are least able to make it. The DeepDom one watches your positions continuously and, if a rule you set is broken, locks the account for the day. Unlocking happens at six in the evening New York time, or through support.
Deep Trades ranks the market's large activity directly on the chart, from MBO (order by order) data. Before configuring it you need an active MBO feed: without one the indicator stays empty, and that is not a settings problem. This tutorial goes through every configuration tab in the order DeepCharts presents them, with the values that matter and what each one changes on screen.
Deep V Tracker combines two readings of volumetric flow in a single indicator. The Patterns module spots anomalies in the relation between price and volume (acceleration, slowdown, exhaustion). The Absorption Pressure module maps where buyers and sellers actually hold control, at precise price levels. The two are configured separately, each with its own logic.
DeepCharts is a Windows desktop application, not a web platform: there is no browser version, and your machine does part of the order book number crunching. The install itself takes five minutes, but three things trip up new users again and again: what the hardware really needs to be, the Windows display language, and the fact that your licence key and your data feed credentials are two completely different things. This guide covers the whole path, from the download to your first simulated order.
Before touching any indicator, DeepCharts needs a connected data feed. The setup happens in two distinct stages: create a feed profile (credentials, server), then attach it to an exchange. Many blockages come from a profile filled in correctly but never attached to an exchange, which leaves the chart without data despite a seemingly complete configuration.
Deep Profile Values shows the main values of a volume by price profile without drawing the full distribution. Unlike a classic profile that plots a histogram across the whole chart height, it only shows the levels that matter: the point of control, the Value Area, VWAP and its bands. This tutorial goes through every configuration panel in logical order, from the analyzed period to the summary display options.
Speed of Tape measures how fast trades are executing, over a rolling time window. It shows up in a separate panel under the price chart, as vertical bars: green or turquoise for positive delta, red or pink for negative delta, with each bar's height showing intensity. This tutorial goes through every configuration tab, with the time window as the central setting the others build around.
Option Profile shows options activity by strike price on a dedicated chart: a green bar on the left for each strike's call volume, a purple bar on the right for put volume. A heavy concentration at one strike, an option wall, flags a level that can act as resistance on the call side or support on the put side. The indicator is only available on NDX, QQQ, SPY and SPX.
The GEX Profile shows dealer gamma exposure strike by strike, in a vertical panel pinned to the right edge of the chart. Before configuring it you need an SPX option chart: the indicator requires real Cboe participant data and exists on no other symbol. This tutorial walks through every settings tab in the order DeepCharts presents them, with the values worth knowing and what each one changes on screen.
The GEX Heatmap paints dealer gamma exposure straight onto price, as horizontal blocks whose colour tells you the side and whose intensity tells you the strength. Before configuring it you need an SPX option chart: like the rest of DeepGamma on that symbol, it requires real Cboe participant data. This tutorial walks through every settings tab in the order DeepCharts presents them, with the values worth knowing and what each one changes on screen.
Gamma Bands draw three levels derived from gamma exposure: Zero Gamma, the price where dealer exposure flips from positive to negative, then Major Gamma and Minor Gamma, the two strongest hedging concentrations. Inside the platform the indicator is called Option Envelopes: that is the name to search for in Indicator Add. This tutorial walks through every settings tab, with the values worth knowing and what each one changes on screen.
Option Big Flows prints large option tickets straight onto the chart, separating four pieces of information per trade: call or put, buy or sell, opening or closing a position. Before configuring it you need an SPX option chart: the indicator requires real Cboe participant data, the only source able to settle the direction and nature of each execution. This tutorial walks through every settings tab, with the values worth knowing and what each one changes on screen.
Expected Move draws on the chart the price band that option implied volatility assigns to the session. Only two settings decide what you read, Interval and Value; everything else is presentation. The indicator is available on NDX, QQQ, SPY and SPX, through an option chart. This tutorial walks through every settings tab, with the values worth knowing and what each one changes on screen.
A map of liquidity: resting buy/sell orders colored by size. You see where large volume hides before it acts. A big orange blob just above price = a sell wall; while it holds, it often caps the move.
When large orders soak up aggressive flow without letting price move. Often a sign of exhaustion and an imminent reversal. A wave of market sells, but the bid holds and price stops dropping → buy-side absorption, bounce likely.
The difference between buying volume (at the ask) and selling volume (at the bid). Cumulative delta reveals which side truly dominates. Price makes a new low but cumulative delta makes a higher low → bullish divergence.
The price level where the most volume traded. It is the session's value reference: a shared meeting point, not a magnet. Price drifts away then comes back to test yesterday's POC before moving on. The POC is the price where the most contracts changed hands over the period.
A large order split up: only a small part is visible and refills on each fill. The real size stays hidden. At the bid, 50 visible lots absorb 2,000 lots without moving → buy-side iceberg.
Fake large orders shown then pulled to mislead the market. Spottable when liquidity “vanishes” as soon as price gets close. A huge sell wall disappears right before being hit → it was a spoof. Spoofing means displaying large orders to give a false impression of supply or demand, then cancelling them before execution.
The bar-by-bar detail of volume traded on the buy and sell side at each price. A green candle with heavy sell volume at the top = trapped buyers, caution. The footprint breaks each candle into buy/sell volume per price level.
The volume-weighted average price: the 'fair value' reference institutions follow. Price rejects VWAP from above and pushes higher → bullish continuation. VWAP averages prices weighted by volume since the open. On DeepCharts, show the session VWAP with its bands.
A quick sweep of an obvious level to trigger stops, just before a reversal. A wick breaks the day's high by 2 ticks then closes below → stop run. A stop run pushes price just beyond a visible high or low to trigger the stops piled there, hand liquidity to large players, then reverse.
A marked excess of aggression on one side at a level, visible on the footprint. Several buy imbalances stacked below price = dynamic support. An imbalance appears when aggressive volume on one side far exceeds the other at a price (often a 3-to-1 ratio).
Analyzing real order flow (who buys, who sells, at what price and size) instead of lagging indicators. Instead of waiting for a moving-average cross, you watch buy-side absorption form live on the book. Order Flow reads the market's raw activity: market (aggressive) orders vs passive (limit) orders, volume traded at each price, and buyer/seller imbalances.
Depth of Market: the real-time list of resting buy and sell orders at each price, level by level. 1,200 lots appear at once on the ask two ticks above → potential sell wall. The DOM shows market depth: how many contracts sit at the bid and ask at each level.
The running sum of delta (aggressive buys minus sells) across the session. Price makes a new high but CVD stays flat → buyers running out of steam. CVD adds delta candle after candle to show net pressure over time.
A horizontal histogram of volume traded at each price over a period: it reveals value areas and gaps. Price leaves a high-volume node and rips through a gap to the next node. Volume Profile stacks volume by price level instead of by time.
The price range where ~70% of volume traded: bounded by the VAH (high) and VAL (low). Price breaks yesterday's VAH and holds above → bullish acceptance. The value area frames where the market deemed price 'fair'.
The order volume available to trade at a given price. Large players seek liquidity to enter without slipping the price. A cluster of stops below the low = liquidity the market will often reach for.
Reading the stream of executed trades one by one (size, price, side) to feel the market's pace and aggression. A burst of large buy blocks at the ask that accelerates → bullish push underway. The tape (Time & Sales) lists every execution in real time.
When one side's aggression fades despite heavy volume, often the end of a move. A climax of buy volume at the top, but price stalls → exhaustion, likely reversal. Exhaustion shows when a spike of aggressive volume no longer moves price: the last buyers (or sellers) enter at the worst moment.
A peak (HVN) or trough (LVN) of volume on the profile: HVNs attract price, LVNs get crossed fast. Price accelerates through an LVN then slows as it reaches the next HVN. A High Volume Node (HVN) is a heavily traded price: the market finds value there and returns.
The total number of open (unclosed) futures contracts. Its change reveals whether a move is backed by fresh money. A rally with rising OI → new longs, a credible trend. Open Interest (OI) counts positions still open.
The maximum loss allowed on a prop-firm account before failure. The most important rule to understand before buying an evaluation. A $2,000 trailing drawdown: go to +$1,000 and your buffer resets to -$1,000 below the new high.
A drawdown that follows your equity high: the more you make, the higher the failure threshold rises. An unrealized +$800 lifts your threshold; price comes back and you hit the drawdown without 'losing'. Trailing drawdown recalculates at each new equity peak (sometimes intraday, sometimes at close).
The share of profits you keep once funded, often 80% to 100% on the trader's side. A 90/10 split: on $1,000 of gains, you take home $900. The profit split defines how profits are shared between you and the prop firm on a funded account.
The actual disbursement of your profits by the prop firm. Its frequency and reliability matter as much as the split. A daily-payout plan: you can withdraw every day once the minimum is reached. A payout is when the firm actually pays you.
A trading account whose capital is provided by a prop firm, earned after passing its evaluation. After passing the eval, you get a $50,000 funded account to trade under the rules. On a funded account, you trade the firm's capital and share the gains (profit split), without risking your own money beyond the evaluation fee.
A prop firm's paid test: hit a profit target without breaking the rules to earn a funded account. Target +6% without hitting the drawdown → eval passed, funded account unlocked. The evaluation (or challenge) measures your discipline: reach a profit target while respecting the drawdown and rules, sometimes within a time limit.
An Order Flow and heatmap analysis software (third-party, deepcharts.com) we use daily to read liquidity. We load the DeepCharts heatmap to spot liquidity walls before the US open. DeepCharts offers heatmap, footprint and order-flow tools in a modern interface.
A fast, visual order book (DOM), third-party software, to read market depth and aggression in real time. On DeepDom, you see a large order refill at the bid → likely support. DeepDom highlights market depth (bid/ask per level), the tape and imbalances in a visual read.
The DAX 40 futures contract, listed on Eurex. Big tick value (€25 per point), deep book: an ideal order-flow playground, that very few prop firms offer. 9:05am: a sell wall refills three times at the same price on the FDAX → likely session ceiling.
Europe's major derivatives exchange (Deutsche Börse group), home of the FDAX, Euro Stoxx 50 and Bund. The prop firm industry's blind spot: nearly all stop at CME. Search “Eurex prop firm” and you get a tiny list, that's exactly the opportunity.
The index of Germany's 40 largest listed companies: Europe's economic barometer, and the underlying of the FDAX. German CPI at 8am → the DAX 40 often sets its morning extreme within the first hour. In practice, the DAX 40 reacts strongly to the German and European macro calendar (CPI, ZEW, IFO, ECB): these releases, often in the morning, frequently set the session's extreme within the first hour.
The European morning session (~8am, 12pm, Paris): the European open, the FDAX liquidity peak and the first real flow of the day. 8:55am on the FDAX: liquidity stacks below the open → the first London-session move often goes to grab it.
Codes in force, checked on this page's update date: Phidias Propfirm → code OFF and MyFundedFutures → code VIPLAD. The code applies when buying the evaluation, on the firm's own site. For the order-flow platform, our partner link OFF applies the best discount currently running on the DeepCharts license, up to -20%.
DeepCharts is included at Phidias Propfirm. It can be used as an option, with your own license, at MyFundedFutures and Alpha Futures. Careful: the build a firm bundles does not unlock every indicator, the full license is bought separately, from $59/mo, with the current discount applied by link OFF.
Few firms open Eurex: in our catalogue, Phidias Propfirm. The rest stop at the CME. It is a decisive criterion if you want to trade the FDAX, whose MBO depth is read with DeepCharts through the Eurex subscription, around $65 a month.
At entry level: Phidias Propfirm from $30 and MyFundedFutures from $80. The sticker price matters less than the real cost: a promo code can cut 50 to 80%, and a drawdown rule that is too tight makes you pay for resets that quickly exceed the initial saving.
Phidias Propfirm splits profits at 80% (up to 100% on Premium), with a end-of-day or static, never intraday trailing drawdown, from 30 $ per evaluation. Access to the DeepCharts order-flow platform is included there. Markets available: CME, Eurex. Promo code in force: up to -80% with code OFF.
MyFundedFutures splits profits at 80/20 (up to 90/10 on Rapid), with a EOD during the evaluation across the range, and once funded except on Rapid (real time) drawdown, from 80 $ per evaluation. The basic version of DeepCharts is included and runs from the evaluation onward. Markets available: CME. Promo code in force: code VIPLAD · the best public discount currently running is already applied on their site.
Alpha Futures splits profits at 90% (flat), with a EOD trailing (on closing balance), locked at starting capital drawdown. Access to the DeepCharts order-flow platform is available as an option there. Markets available: CME. No promo code running at this firm right now.
Pricing is indicative and set by third parties (software publisher, exchanges); check before subscribing. Partner links: we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Trading futures involves a risk of loss.