Glossary
Order flow and options glossary
The words traders use for what happens in the order book and the options market, each explained in a few sentences. Most of them can be seen directly in Swiftedge Depth, the free live Bitcoin order book heatmap, or in Swiftedge Options, the live BTC options chain.
The order book
- Order book
- The list of all resting buy and sell limit orders for a market, sorted by price. Bids sit below the current price and asks above it, and the book changes many times a second. → heatmap guide
- Limit and market orders
- A limit order buys or sells at a set price or better and, if it cannot fill at once, rests in the book; these waiting orders are what a heatmap draws. A market order trades immediately against them. → maker and taker
- Bid, ask and spread
- The bid is the highest price a buyer will pay right now; the ask is the lowest price a seller will accept. The gap between them is the spread, which a taker pays and a maker earns.
- Market depth (DOM)
- How much size rests at each price near the current price. A DOM ladder or depth chart shows one moment; a heatmap shows it over time. Depth shows both, with a depth profile beside the price axis. → heatmap guide
- Order book heatmap
- A chart that colours each price level by its resting liquidity, with time on the horizontal axis. Bright bands are large resting orders and dark areas are thin liquidity. → Bitcoin heatmap · heatmap guide
- Liquidity wall
- An unusually large resting order, or cluster of orders, at one price, seen as a bright band on a heatmap. When price arrives, a wall can hold, be eaten by aggressive orders, or be pulled. → walls guide
- Absorption
- Aggressive orders keep trading into a level, but the resting size keeps being replenished, so price does not get through. On a heatmap, bubbles stack on a band that stays bright. → order flow guide
- Pulled liquidity
- Resting size that disappears without trading, often as price approaches. The band vanishes with no bubbles on it, which is very different from a wall that was eaten. → walls guide
- Spoofing
- Placing large orders with no intention of letting them fill, to create a false picture of supply or demand. It is prohibited on regulated markets, but not every pulled order is spoofing. → spoofing guide · walls guide
- Iceberg order
- A large order that shows only part of its size and refills as that part trades. The tell is a level that trades far more volume than it ever displays. → order flow guide
- Sweep
- An aggressive order that trades through several price levels at once, taking the resting liquidity in between. On a heatmap it shows as a burst of bubbles and a jump in price. → walls guide
Trades and volume
- Maker and taker
- A maker places a limit order that rests in the book; a taker trades at once against it. Makers add liquidity and usually pay lower fees; takers remove it and pay for immediacy. → order flow guide
- Aggressor side
- The side of a trade that crossed the spread. Binance marks it on every trade, and Depth colours its bubbles by it: teal when a buyer lifted the ask, violet when a seller hit the bid. → live in Depth
- Delta
- Aggressive buy volume minus aggressive sell volume over a period, such as one bar. It measures urgency, not who was right. → order flow guide
- Cumulative volume delta (CVD)
- The running total of delta. On its own it can mislead: heavy buying into a seller who keeps refilling lifts CVD while price goes nowhere. Depth draws CVD since 00:00 UTC over its volume pane. → CVD guide · live in Depth
- VWAP
- Volume-weighted average price: the average price of all trades over a period, weighted by size. Depth draws the current day's VWAP as a yellow line. → live in Depth
- Volume profile
- A histogram of traded volume by price over a period: where the market did its business rather than where orders rested. It is one of the steps in Depth's Mentor analysis.
- Point of control (POC)
- The price with the most traded volume in a volume profile, the level the market accepted most in that period. → volume profile
- Value area
- The range around the point of control that holds a set share of the period's volume, commonly 70 %. Its edges are the value area high (VAH) and low (VAL). → POC
Sessions
- Trading sessions
- Bitcoin trades around the clock, but activity follows the business day in Asia, Europe and the US. Depth and the daily report use Asia (Tokyo), London and New York sessions in local opening hours. → daily report
- Opening range
- The high and low of the first minutes of a session. Session Orbs in Depth draws it for Tokyo, London and New York with relative volume and historical target hit rates from the past 60 days. → live in Depth
Futures
- Perpetual futures
- Futures with no expiry date, held close to the spot price by a funding rate. BTCUSDT on Binance USDⓈ-M futures, the market Depth shows, is a perpetual settled in USDT.
- Funding rate
- A periodic payment between longs and shorts on a perpetual future: longs pay when it trades above spot, shorts when below. On Binance's BTCUSDT perpetual it is normally paid every eight hours.
- Liquidation
- The forced closing of a leveraged position whose margin no longer covers the loss. Liquidations execute as market orders, so a cluster of them can sweep the book. → sweep · liquidation heatmap vs order book heatmap
Options
- Strike price
- The price at which an option can be exercised. Swiftedge Options draws one row per strike, centred on the live BTC price, with calls on the left and puts on the right. → options chain guide
- Expiry
- The time an option contract settles. BTC options on Deribit, OKX and Bybit settle at 08:00 UTC, with daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly expiries. Swiftedge Options has a tab for each expiry and an all-expiries view. → options expiry guide · expiry pages · in Swiftedge Options
- Open interest
- The number of futures or options contracts still open. In Swiftedge Options, bar length is open interest in BTC at each strike on Deribit, OKX and Bybit: where positions sit, not which way they lean. It is also the main input to gamma exposure. → options chain guide · GEX
- Implied volatility (IV)
- The volatility priced into options. ATM IV is the implied volatility of strikes near the current price. Deribit publishes a Bitcoin implied volatility index, DVOL, and Session Orbs scales its breakout bands with implied volatility.
- Implied odds (risk-neutral probability)
- The chance of each settlement price that today's option prices imply, read from the implied volatility smile. It is a risk-neutral measure: it describes what options cost, not what will happen, so it is not a forecast. In Swiftedge Options it sets the height of each row. → options chain guide
- Expected move
- How far options price BTC to move by an expiry: about price × ATM IV × √(days/365). About two in three priced outcomes fall inside ±1σ. Options-implied, not a forecast. → implied volatility
- Max pain
- For one expiry, the settlement price at which option holders together would collect the least, computed from open interest. It is arithmetic on open positions, not a target. → max pain guide · in Swiftedge Options
- The money paid for options over a period, split by direction from the taker of each trade: calls bought and puts sold count as bullish premium, puts bought and calls sold as bearish premium. Premium is not exposure. → in Swiftedge Options
- Gamma exposure (GEX)
- An estimate of how much options dealers must buy or sell to stay hedged as price moves. Depth computes gamma × open interest × price² × 1 %, in USD, from Deribit, OKX and Bybit. Who holds the options is not known: the GEX levels assume dealers are long calls and short puts, while the dealer hedge map defaults to dealer positions estimated from Deribit trade flow (Deribit only). → GEX guide · live in Depth · long and short gamma
- Gamma flip
- The price where estimated dealer gamma changes sign: on one side hedging tends to dampen moves, on the other it tends to add to them. Under the usual assumption dealers are long gamma above it and short gamma below it. An estimate. → gamma flip guide · GEX
- Call wall and put wall
- The strikes with the largest estimated call gamma and the largest put gamma for an expiry, where dealer hedging tends to concentrate. They are often watched as ceiling-like and floor-like levels and often sit at round numbers. Depth marks them CW and PW; Swiftedge Options tags them on the chain. Estimates, not measured positions. → call wall and put wall guide · today's levels · in Swiftedge Options
- 0DTE options
- Options that expire the same day; in Depth, within 24 hours. BTC options on Deribit, OKX and Bybit settle at 08:00 UTC. Their gamma sits close to price, so Depth colours them separately. → live in Depth
- Long and short gamma
- Long-gamma dealers hedge by selling rallies and buying dips, which tends to dampen moves. Short-gamma dealers buy rallies and sell dips, which can amplify them. Dealer positions are not public, so which regime applies is an estimate. → dealer hedging guide · GEX
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