In short. Order flow is the stream of executed trades and resting orders in a market, read trade by trade rather than as a price line: who bought at the ask, who sold at the bid, how much, and where limit orders are waiting. Order-flow trading uses that stream, on a footprint chart, a DOM or a heatmap, to judge whether a move is being driven or absorbed.
The raw material is the time and sales (every trade, with its price, size and side) and the order book (resting bids and asks). Platforms such as DeepChartsOFF, ATAS or Bookmap organise it into cells, ladders and heat so that absorption, exhaustion and icebergs become visible.
Order flow is a reading, not a signal: it tells you what happened at a price, not what will happen. Its edge comes from context (a level, a prior high, a value area) plus a pattern in the flow, plus a stop in ticks. The journal on this site covers each pattern with a worked example.
On a prop firm account, order flow pairs with a tight risk rule: a stop of 20 to 40 ticks on NQ sized to the drawdown. The firms that route DeepChartsOFF are listed on the board.
Questions traders ask
What is Order flow?
Order flow is the stream of executed trades and resting orders in a market, read trade by trade rather than as a price line: who bought at the ask, who sold at the bid, how much, and where limit orders are waiting. Order-flow trading uses that stream, on a footprint chart, a DOM or a heatmap, to judge whether a move is being driven or absorbed.