Liquidity heatmap
How to read it
- Every horizontal stripe is a price level with resting limit orders. The brighter the colour, the larger the order.
- Bids (buy limit orders) and asks (sell limit orders) use different palettes, so you see at a glance which side the liquidity sits on.
- A stripe that persists while price approaches it is a wall. Watch how price behaves when it reaches the level.
- A stripe that disappears right before price touches it was pulled. Spoofed liquidity often looks like this.
Settings
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Extend heatmap (bars) | 1 | How many bars into the future the current order book is projected (1 to 100). |
| Aggregate | none | Add the order books of other exchanges to the heatmap. |
| Aggregate SPOT only with other SPOTs | on | When aggregating, mix spot books only with spot books. |
| Aggregate FUTURES only with other FUTURES | on | When aggregating, mix futures books only with futures books. |
| Relative mode (relative sizes by exchange) | off | Colours every order by its size relative to the other orders on its own exchange instead of the raw quantity, so aggregated exchanges become comparable. |
| Palette | lite | Built-in colour palettes for asks and bids. |
| Use custom palette | off | Define up to five custom colours for asks and for bids. |
The full list of order flow indicators and their settings is in the indicator reference.
Relative mode
By default the colour of a stripe follows the order quantity. With Relative mode every order is first ranked on its own exchange: the resting orders of the market are split into groups from the smallest to the largest, and the stripe takes the number of the group its order falls into. A big wall on a small exchange gets the same colour as a big wall on a large one.
- With aggregation the group numbers of all exchanges are summed per price level: a level that is large on every aggregated exchange is the brightest, and one exchange with a huge book no longer hides the others.
- The filter sliders and the tooltip work in the same units, a plain number instead of a quantity in coins.
- The groups are the ones the liquidity screener uses, so the heatmap and the screener rate the same order the same way.
- On 1s and 5s charts the heatmap keeps showing quantities.
Predicted liquidations
The same layer can show estimated liquidation levels instead of the order book. Add the liquidations heatmap on a futures chart: it replaces the orderbook heatmap, and the filters, palettes and tooltip described above apply unchanged. Asks become short liquidations above the price and bids become long liquidations below it. A level is removed once price has traded through it, so the columns on the right show only what is still outstanding. The levels come from a model (open interest changes, taker volume and the leverage tiers you select), not from exchange data; realised liquidations stay in the liquidations panel and the liquidation clusters.
