What you will learn
- Read the numbers inside a cluster and understand bid × ask
- Determine a candle's delta and what its disagreement with price means
- Find imbalances and absorption zones
- Know which instruments give a trustworthy footprint picture
IdeaWhat happens inside a candle
An ordinary candle hides the main thing: how much was bought, how much was sold, and at what price. The footprint opens it up — it shows the buy and sell volumes at each level.
This is tape reading: you can see where aggressive buyers overpowered sellers, and where a large limit absorbed the flow and stopped the move.
Analogy. A candle is a book's cover, the footprint is its pages. The cover shows the color, the pages show what actually happened.
AnatomyBreak down what to read in the flow
Three key footprint ideas are marked on the candles below. Tap each one — open them all to complete the step.
- Delta
- The difference between buys and sells at a level. Plus — buyers are pressing, minus — sellers.
- Absorption
- A large limit soaks up the entire flow and dampens the move. Price stalls and doesn't go further.
- Imbalance
- A sharp skew of one side at a level — many times more buys than sells (or vice versa).
This is an exercise from the lesson. You can run it on a live chart in the terminal, where progress is recorded.
Try it on the chartSee it liveThe footprint ladder up close
On the left are sell volumes bid, on the right buy volumes ask. The level with the largest flow — the point of control — is highlighted in amber.
PracticeThere are sells, but price holds
Price was falling, and a huge sell volume (bid) went through at the lower level — but price didn't go lower, it got stuck. What is this?
This is an exercise from the lesson. You can run it on a live chart in the terminal, where progress is recorded.
Try it on the chartPracticeBuild the footprint reading
Put the flow-reading steps in order — click them one by one.
- Find an imbalance in the flow
- Wait for absorption at a level
- Enter on the flow reversal
This is an exercise from the lesson. You can run it on a live chart in the terminal, where progress is recorded.
Try it on the chartRecapCheck off what you've learned
- I understand that the footprint opens up the volumes inside a candle
- I read delta as the edge of buyers or sellers
- I recognize absorption — a large limit dampens the move
- I see imbalance as a sharp skew of the flow
This is an exercise from the lesson. You can run it on a live chart in the terminal, where progress is recorded.
Try it on the chartWhat the numbers inside a candle show
Every trade on an exchange happens between someone waiting in the order book and someone who accepted their price. The second is the aggressor, and it is their behaviour a footprint counts separately. At each price level inside a candle sit two numbers: the volume that traded at the seller's price and the volume that traded at the buyer's.
That immediately reveals what an ordinary chart cannot. A candle closed up, but all the volume inside it traded into the bid — meaning the rise happened not on buying but on an absence of supply, and it is fragile. A candle fell, but buyers took meaningful size at the bottom — someone was probably building a position against the move.
Delta and its disagreement with price
Delta is the difference between aggressive buying and aggressive selling inside a candle. Positive means buyers held the initiative, negative means sellers did.
The most useful thing about delta is not its sign but its disagreement with price. The classic case: price makes a new low while delta at that low is noticeably less negative than at the previous one. Sellers are pressing, but the pressure is weakening — the sell-off is running out.
The reverse is just as telling: strong positive delta while price does not rise. Buyers are being absorbed — someone stands in the book with size and hands them everything they take.
Imbalances and absorption
An imbalance is a situation where volumes at adjacent levels differ several times over: at one price buyers took markedly more than sellers gave up one level below. Such places are marked on the footprint and often become levels price returns to.
Absorption is the opposite story: aggressors keep hitting one way in size and price does not move. That is a large limit participant taking the flow onto themselves. When absorption ends and price finally goes, it goes fast, and usually against whoever was pressing.
Both phenomena can only be read on instruments with trustworthy volume, which is the next point and matters more than it seems.
Where footprint works and where it misleads
Cluster analysis is built on real exchange volume, and it is reliable where that volume is centralised: exchange-traded futures, crypto on a major venue.
Forex is a different picture: the market is decentralised, no single volume exists, and what a terminal shows is the volume of one data provider — a small sample of the whole market. You can use it, as long as you remember it is part of the picture rather than all of it.
The second limit is the timeframe. A footprint is built for reading intraday movement; on daily candles the cluster picture loses meaning, because too many different things happen inside one day.
The beginner's main mistake is trying to trade from the numbers alone. A footprint answers the question "what is happening right now at this level" and says nothing about where that level sits in market structure. It strengthens a decision made from the chart; it does not replace it.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a footprint chart in simple terms?
- A chart where inside each candle you can see how much volume traded at every price, split into buying and selling. An ordinary candle shows only the result; a footprint shows how that result came about.
- What is delta in cluster analysis?
- The difference between aggressive buying and selling inside a candle. The most useful part is not its sign but its disagreement with price: a weakening delta at a new extreme means the move is running out.
- Does footprint work on forex?
- Only partly. Forex is decentralised, there is no single volume, and the terminal shows one provider's data — a sample. Cluster analysis is most reliable on exchange futures and crypto.
- What is absorption on a footprint?
- A situation where aggressive trades keep hitting one way in size while price does not move: a large limit participant is taking the flow. Once absorption ends, the move usually starts in the opposite direction.
Terms covered
This material is educational and is not individual investment advice.