Order flow · Trade bubbles
Order flow bubbles: every trade as a bubble, live and free
Order flow bubbles, also called trade bubbles or a bubble chart, draw every executed trade at the price and time it happened. The bigger the bubble, the more volume traded; the color shows which side was aggressive. Swiftedge Depth draws them live over the order book heatmap: free, in your browser, no sign-up.
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Open Swiftedge DepthWhat order flow bubbles are
Every trade is a match between two orders: one that was resting in the order book and one that crossed the spread to trade against it. A bubble chart draws each match as a circle. Its position across the chart is the time of the trade, its height is the price, and its area grows with the size that traded. The color shows the aggressor, the order that crossed the spread:
- Teal bubbles: a buyer lifted the ask. Someone paid the offer rather than wait for a seller to come to them.
- Violet bubbles: a seller hit the bid. Someone accepted the best bid rather than wait for a buyer.
The side is not guessed from the candle. Each trade carries its own record of which side was the taker, so a teal bubble inside a falling candle is still a buy. A volume bar says how much traded in the period; the bubbles show where inside it, how fast, and who pushed.
Why they matter
A candlestick shows the result of the trading; the bubbles show the trading itself. Aggressive orders pay the spread to trade now, so a run of large bubbles in one color shows who would not wait. Bubbles also make visible what a candle hides: absorption, where one side keeps trading into a level that does not move; sweeps, where one order takes several price levels in a second or two; and stop runs, where stop orders and forced closes of leveraged positions fire just beyond an obvious high or low. The Liquidations layer in Depth gives those forced closes their own rings: orange when a long was closed, cyan when a short was.
How to read bubbles with the order book heatmap
Bubbles show what traded. The order book heatmap behind them shows what is waiting: green bands below the price are resting bids, violet bands above are resting asks, and the brighter the band, the more size. Read the two layers together:
- Find the nearest bright band. Large resting orders are liquidity walls. Note how far the band is from the price and how long it has stood.
- Watch the bubbles that reach it. What matters is not that the price touches the band, but what happens to the band while bubbles land on it. There are three outcomes.
- The wall holds. Bubbles stack at the band's price, the band stays bright or refills, and the price turns away. When more trades there than the band ever showed, the size is being replaced, or part of it was hidden as an iceberg order.
- The wall is eaten. Bubbles land, the band dims as its size is used up, and the price trades through to the next band. A sweep does this in one stroke.
- The wall is pulled. The band disappears before any bubbles reach it. Nothing traded there; the order was canceled. Only the two layers together show whether a wall was filled or pulled.
- Check the follow-through. After a wall goes, do bubbles keep coming on the same side, or do they thin out? Bubbles that shrink and space out as the price extends mean fewer and smaller aggressive orders are carrying the move.
Filtering for large trades
On a busy market thousands of small trades print every minute, and the large ones are easy to lose. The gear next to Bubbles in Depth's indicator list has three controls:
- Min. size hides trades below a size you choose, so only the prints you care about are left.
- Aggregate merges trades on the same side at the same price within a window of 1 to 30 seconds into one bubble, placed at their volume-weighted price and time. An order filled in many small pieces then shows as the one order it was.
- Size scales every bubble up or down. Bubbles are sized against the trades on screen, so the largest prints stay readable whether you look at one minute or at several hours.
Small trades are drawn in a pale tint and larger ones in full teal or violet, so the eye goes to size first. For trades that must stand out at any zoom, turn on Executions: a laser across the chart at the price of every unusually large trade, with its size next to it. Its threshold is relative to what is normal for the market, so one setting works on large and small books.
Common bubble patterns
| Pattern | What you see | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Absorption | Large bubbles of one color at one price, the price flat, the band still bright | A resting order taking the other side. Depth's Absorption layer marks these zones as squares. |
| Sweep | A diagonal chain of same-colored bubbles through several levels within seconds, bands vanishing behind it | An aggressive order larger than the liquidity on several levels |
| Stop run | A burst of same-side bubbles just past a recent high or low, often with liquidation rings | Stop orders and forced closes triggering one another |
| Iceberg | Repeated fills at one price that add up to more than the band ever showed | Hidden or refilled size at that price |
| Exhaustion | Bubbles getting smaller and further apart as the price extends | Less aggressive volume behind the move |
The footprint chart counts the same trades at every price inside each candle, and a stacked imbalance there is often the numeric trace of a sweep on the bubble chart.
Order flow bubbles on TradingView and in Swiftedge Depth
Search for order flow bubbles on TradingView and you mostly find volume bubble indicators written in Pine Script. They run on any symbol TradingView carries and are a quick way to flag heavy candles. They are built from candle data, though, so they answer a different question from a trade-by-trade bubble chart:
| Volume bubble indicator on TradingView | Trade bubbles in Swiftedge Depth | |
|---|---|---|
| One bubble per | Candle with unusually high volume | Trade, or cluster of trades if you aggregate |
| Buy or sell | Usually inferred from the candle's direction or from lower-timeframe bars | Each trade's own aggressor side |
| Order book behind it | Not part of the data a Pine script receives | The heatmap of resting bids and asks, four updates a second |
| Markets | Any symbol on TradingView | Bitcoin, gold, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, US 500, US 100, silver and WTI crude oil perpetual futures |
| Where it runs | Inside your TradingView chart | Any browser, desktop or phone, no account |
The two work side by side: keep your chart in TradingView and open the same moment in Depth when you want to see the individual trades and the liquidity they hit. Order book heatmaps for TradingView users covers the rest of that setup.
Common questions
What are order flow bubbles?
A chart that draws every executed trade as a bubble at its price and time. The bubble's size is the volume that traded and its color is the aggressor side, so you see who traded, where and how much, trade by trade.
What do the bubble colors mean?
In Swiftedge Depth a teal bubble is an aggressive buy (a buyer lifted the ask) and a violet bubble is an aggressive sell (a seller hit the bid). The bands behind them are the order book: green bids below the price, violet asks above.
Is there a free trade bubble chart for crypto?
Yes. Swiftedge Depth draws every trade as a bubble over the live order book heatmap, free in the browser and with no sign-up. You can also put a small live version on your own site with the widget.
Where does the trade data come from?
Every trade in the perpetual futures markets Swiftedge records, each with its own aggressor side. Everything Swiftedge shows is its own calculation on public perpetual futures data from Hyperliquid and Lighter; the FAQ lists the sources.
Can I see order flow bubbles on TradingView?
TradingView has community volume bubble indicators that mark candles with high volume. Bubbles for individual trades over the order book are in Swiftedge Depth, which runs in a browser tab next to your TradingView chart.
Do bubbles show where the price goes next?
No. Bubbles are a record of trades that already happened. They describe who was aggressive and where; they are not a signal, a forecast or financial advice.