Reading the order book
Resting buy and sell orders at each price. Useful for scalping, easy to misread.
What it is
The order book lists resting limit orders: bids below the market, asks above. Thick levels can act as support or resistance while they remain, but they can also be pulled in a moment (spoofing).
Watch how the book reacts: a large bid that keeps getting hit without price falling shows absorption; a thin ask above price shows less resistance to a rise.
How to use it
- Check the spread and the depth within 0.5% of price.
- Compare bid and ask size (imbalance).
- Wait for trades, not just resting orders, to confirm.
- Treat large resting orders with scepticism.
Orders that trade matter more than orders that sit.
Common mistakes
- Trading only on big displayed orders.
- Ignoring that walls move and vanish.
- Using depth on illiquid markets.
Practise it in TradeDesk X
The Micro cockpit shows a live order-book ladder for the selected coin with spread and bid share.
Related lessons
🌊
Footprint and delta
How much was bought and sold at each price inside a candle.
🌊Whale prints and large-trade flow
Unusually large trades. They show where size is being committed.
Educational content only. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Trading leveraged products can lose more than you deposit. Practise with paper trading first and never risk money you cannot afford to lose.