Knowing what the numbers mean is step one. This page is step two: the footprint patterns traders most often read, what each looks like on screen, how traders commonly interpret it, and the questions to ask before you trust it. Keep it open next to a live chart; every pattern here appears multiple times a day on liquid pairs.
A note before the patterns: a footprint signal is a sentence, not a verdict. "Sellers are initiating and nobody is absorbing" is useful information at a level you already care about, and noise in the middle of nowhere. Location first, order flow second.
Absorption: the quiet counterparty
What you see: price pushes into a level. The footprint keeps printing heavy aggressive volume in the direction of the push (big numbers on the ask side into resistance, or the bid side into support), but price stops making progress. Candles stack tall wicks; delta stays strongly one-sided while price goes nowhere.
What it means: someone with size is passively taking everything the aggressors send. The aggressive side is spending fuel and getting no distance for it.
How traders read it: absorption at a level already marked (prior value area edge, TPO poor high, big round number) is commonly read as a sign of a potential reversal. The moment the aggressive prints dry up is the point many traders watch, since the absorbed side can flip and the market can rotate. If price instead breaks through the absorbing level, the counterparty either finished or gave up, and many traders read the break as backed by real volume.
Ask yourself: is delta diverging from price here (strongly negative delta, price flat) or is the level simply not done breaking yet? One candle of absorption is a hint; two or three at the same price is a pattern.
Stacked imbalances: initiative you can measure
What you see: multiple imbalance highlights (your threshold, three-to-one by default territory) stacked on consecutive price levels on the same side, in the direction of the move.
What it means: the aggressors are not just winning, they are winning at every step. This is what real initiative looks like, as opposed to a drift that happens to close green.
How traders read it: stacked buy imbalances breaking out of balance are commonly read as evidence of continuation rather than a fading move. Stacked imbalances against an open position are read as a shift in initiative. The settings let you require a minimum stack and mark naked imbalances (levels never revisited); many traders watch naked stacked imbalances as reference levels on retests.
Ask yourself: did the stack print at the start of the move (initiative, healthy) or at the very end of an extended run into an obvious level (often the last buyers, see exhaustion below)?
Exhaustion: the move that ran out of buyers
What you see: at the extreme of a directional push, the prints shrink dramatically. Where the middle of the move showed hundreds per level, the last two or three levels show single digits. Often the final level prints on one side only.
What it means: the aggressor side stopped participating. Nobody is left to pay up. The move ends not because opposition showed up, but because demand simply ran out.
How traders read it: exhaustion alone is commonly read as a move losing momentum, not yet as a reversal. Traders often look for it in combination: exhaustion at the high plus absorption on the next attempt up is the classic top-forming sequence in order flow literature. On the footprint you will see tiny ask prints at the extreme, then heavy ask prints one level lower that go nowhere.
Ask yourself: is this exhaustion or a liquidity gap? Thin markets print small numbers everywhere. Judge shrinkage relative to the candles before it, not in absolute terms.
Unfinished auctions: business left on the table
What you see: a candle high or low where both bid and ask still printed meaningful volume at the extreme (the auction did not finish with a one-sided zero). OpenMarket can mark these levels for you (Profile tab: unfinished auction), and optionally keep them on the price scale.
What it means: the market left that price while both sides still wanted to trade there. Auction theory holds that unfinished business tends to get revisited; markets do not always do so.
How traders read it: unfinished auction levels are commonly treated as reference and reaction zones, not as signals by themselves. They are often read together with TPO structure: an unfinished auction sitting inside a prior value area is commonly watched as a rotation reference.
Delta divergence: price and effort disagree
What you see: price makes a new high, but the candle's delta (and the cumulative delta stats row, if you pinned it) is lower than on the previous high, or outright negative.
What it means: the new high was made with less aggressive buying than the last one. The move is being carried by momentum and stops, not fresh initiative.
How traders read it: divergence is context, the weakest read on this page on its own. Its role is to prompt a closer look at the extreme for exhaustion and absorption. When all three line up at a marked level, that is the full sequence top and bottom traders look for, and it can still fail.