Footprint Chart Explained: Bid × Ask, Imbalances and Point of Control

Each row reads as sells × buys. A row showing 12.4 × 48.9 means 12.4 units were sold with market orders at that price, and 48.9 were bought with market orders. The bigger number tells you which side was more aggressive at that exact level.

the free order-flow tool on The Tradeskill draws the footprint right on top of each candle once you zoom in far enough for the numbers to fit. The row size follows your zoom automatically, or you can lock it to a multiple of the market's tick size in Settings if you want a fixed grid.

Buyers lift the offer, and the offer sits one tick above the bid. So the fair comparison for buy volume at a price is the sell volume one row below it, not the sell volume on the same row. That is a diagonal comparison, and it is how most footprint tools, including this one, mark imbalances.

Here a buy imbalance is flagged when buy volume at a price is at least three times the sell volume one row below; a sell imbalance when sell volume is at least three times the buy volume one row above. Tiny rows are ignored so that a 0.1 × 0.4 row does not light up as "imbalanced". Flagged numbers are drawn in bold.

One imbalance is noise. Three or more in consecutive rows, all on the same side, is a stacked imbalance, and it is one of the clearest footprints of real intent: someone kept crossing the spread, level after level, without waiting for a better price.

Stacked buy imbalances in a rally often mark a zone that later acts as support, because the buyers who were in that much of a hurry tend to defend their entries. The fair value gap cards in the tool count the longest run of stacked imbalances in the gap candle for exactly this reason.

The point of control is the price row inside a candle where the most total volume traded. It is drawn as a gold box. A POC near the top of a bullish candle shows buyers were still trading heavily at the highs; a POC near the bottom of a candle that closed high shows most of the business was done low and price was then pushed away.

The POC of a big displacement candle is also a useful reference: if price comes back later, it is the level where the most traders in that move got filled.

Exhaustion: very small numbers at the extreme high or low of a candle. Aggression simply ran out there, which often marks a local turning point.

Absorption: large aggressive volume on one side at the same few prices while price does not move through them. Someone passive is taking the other side.

Unfinished auction: meaningful volume on both sides right at the high or low. The market did not finish exploring that price, and often comes back to it.