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Bookmap's DOM and Trading Panel offers all of this functionality as well as many different customized configurations. This video gives a good overall of all of it;
An important feature of Bookmap that is not frequently discussed or appreciated is the API that allows for automated trading.
Many of the DOM instructors who teach Order Flow were from the pre-HFT and algo era. Now times have changed, and the tools need to advance accordingly.
Good point, thank you. Bookmap's API is Java based and very robust. You can code your own automated trading strategies and indicators, or hire a coder. More info is on our website.
Moreover, you can sell your proprietary indicators and automated strategies on the new Bookmap Marketplace. Or purchase third party vendor's indicators as well. Lots of new opportunities and low hanging fruit for the HFT algo era, to extend on Rainmakersg point above.
To offer an example of what I said in the above quote, I wanted to point to today's 134pm and 138pm one-minute bar (NY Time on June 8, 2020) for ES, NQ, YM, and RTY. Big volume spike out of nowhere on "no news," and RTY was the redheaded stepchild left out of the mix.
Unfortunately, I was not watching time n sales but my view of it is this:
A number of 1k-contract lots were bought with aggressive buy orders. In the ES, we got 20,286 contracts at 134pm and 12,933 at 138pm. This about 13x and 7x times the average volume for that minute of the day, over the last 10 or 20 sessions. For perspective, the average volume for the opening minute (930am) is around 12.5k contracts, give or take. But today's volume story played out similarly for NQ and YM, but not RTY. NQ had about 5x and 4x avg vol; YM had about 7x and 5x. RTY had about 4x and 3x the normal average volume for 134pm and 138pm, but RTY's price retraced against the buying and fell below where the aggressive buying began.
Further, on ES, I saw fairly high passive sell orders at the 3015 level, but the orders were pulled as price approached. This functioned as a flag for a target to hit. When the passive sell orders were pulled and reloaded at 3020, price came to rest at 3015 zone.
Bottom line, huge unusual volume from out of nowhere. No news to warrant this volume, and certainly nothing to warrant the shear aggression in size of market buy orders.
The aggressive buying began at about 3208, which is just below the overnight high (3211). Further, price had bounced off of 3211 three times during the day (ETH and RTH together). The critical point is that IF price had bounced off of (or fallen away from) 3211 yet again, I believe the bears would have entered and taken control of the market and sent prices below the 3202, which MIGHT have influenced the direction for tomorrow. Of course, I don't know this. And today has not yet closed. But the point is, I have seen this volume-out-nowhere over and over.
If it was run-of-the-mill stop hunting, price would normally shoot back in the other direction after the wash-out occurred. But in these situations I am describing, price just keeps going in the original direction of the wash-out (long, here).
Whether you call a nefarious force or just the market being the market, it is always odd volumes at odd times but at key price levels/zones.
And to bring this back on topic, I believe Jigsaw and Bookmap are great tools to help you see these things play out and form your own opinion because maybe I'm just seeing ghosties and goblins!
PS. As to news, the only news at that time was about Occidental and that was not sufficient to explain this. And there were no tweets.
Learning Volume Profile is the same as Market Profile except your using volume instead of TPO's. Same concept. I learned a lot from "Order Flow Analytics" and took every one of their courses, but I think as long as you can draw a profile and understand what the profile is telling you, that is 90% of the battle. I saw that you use Sierra charts and I believe they have some pretty good drawing tools. I like doing my homework on where I think the market is going then I watch Futures Trader 71, Morad Askar on YouTube each morning and see if I was even close to what he did. So far I'm about 70% correct There are a number of guys on Twitter I follow and a lot of them are "Volume Profilers". They have been doing it a lot longer than I have and are really good at it. I've been watching a couple of guys, @doubleWideCap and @Reveretrading a lot lately and found they have a great grasp on how the market works. I suggest you find someone like these guys and see if they will give you a little insight on trading. I always thought that Market Profile was a good way to trade and it is to some extent, but I have found knowing the context of the market is more important than any indicator or chart out there and that's part of this trading I have a tough time with.
If you need anything, I don't know that much but I'll be more than happy to share what I know.
Carl Mitchell [email protected]
I'm not that far from ya. I live near Gainesville, Texas.
Good Luck.
Bookmap for seeing where long-standing orders are located (maybe several points away) - it gives me a good idea where price is likely heading and where the action is going to be.
Bookmap for zooming in quickly for very detailed analysis, for example if price jumps or suddenly reverses, I can take a look to see exactly what happened.
Bookmap for the MBO Stops and Iceberg tool which helps me understand how other traders are positioning themselves.
Jigsaw for actually placing and managing orders.
Jigsaw's Auction Vista for identifying scalping entries and exits, e.g. trading breakouts of a 2-tick range on a 10s chart.
If I had to summarise, Bookmap helps me understand where the action is going to happen and Jigsaw lets me trade that action with sniper precision.
The reason I don't use Bookmap for entering orders is the height of each entry in the DOM changes as I scale the heatmap. Jigsaw's height is fixed which makes it better suited for point and click order management.
Other things to note:
Bookmap needs to run on a local PC with a graphics card for smooth scrolling and fast zooming. It doesn't run well on a remote desktop.
Jigsaw runs perfectly on a remote desktop, which means I can run it at a Data Centre for faster execution of client-managed orders, e.g. volume stops or trailing limit orders.
Bookmap looks gorgeous on a 4k display at 100% scaling.
Jigsaw is best suited to a 25" or 27" QHD display. On a 27" 4k display, you either need to use scaling (which results in fuzzy text) or accept the menu and icons will be small. Luckily the actual DOM and Auction Vista scale fine by changing the font size, so the important bits are clear and sharp.
If I could have only one tool:
As a scalper (seconds), Jigsaw is invaluable to me for the precision it offers and speed of managing orders. Trading the open and the close is great with Jigsaw and a fast data feed.
As an intraday trader (minutes to hours), I would take Bookmap.
"Bookmap needs to run on a local PC with a graphics card for smooth scrolling and fast zooming. It doesn't run well on a remote desktop."
For the past 8 months, I've run Bookmap on a CME collocated server with no performance issues. Bookmap's Time and Sales speed is faster than other platforms I've
used based on visual observation. Most notably Siera Chart with Denali and Rithmic data feeds. I don't recall a Jigsaw comparison.
Valid point that Bookmap DOM spacing can be an issue so I use the Bookmap DOM in conjunction with Rithmic R-Trade Pro DOM to trade.
18 months ago I ran Jigsaw on a collocated server and in my experience it consumed more resources than I thought it should for its functionality.
And most importantly Bookmap has an MBO stop and iceberg indicator.
I just wanted to inform you in the next release of Bookmap (7.2), you'll have the ability to drag the chart up and down, without the need to change the scale or to click on the dragging hand tool button. I believe this might solve your chart scaling issue for order entry within Bookmap. We plan to release 7.2 in Aug. Keep your eyes peeled!
