Always name the dataset: a heuristic score, resting notional, and executed flow are not interchangeable measures.
Three lenses, three questions
Price-based pressure asks whether recent returns, range position, and activity point upward or downward. Resting-book pressure asks how much quoted quantity or notional is currently visible on bids and asks. Executed-flow pressure asks which side initiated completed trades. A useful analysis states which lens it uses before saying “buyers dominate.”
None is ground truth about future direction. Resting orders can be canceled, hidden liquidity is not visible, and executed buying can be absorbed by passive sellers. Price heuristics compress outcomes but cannot identify the orders that caused them.
Resting notional versus completed trades
A bid is a resting offer to buy; an ask is a resting offer to sell. Comparing raw quantities can be misleading when levels have different prices or assets use different units. Notional converts a level to quote-value terms as price × quantity. DeepBook dashboard bid and ask notionals describe this resting book, not trader long and short positions.
Aggressor flow is different. A marketable buy consumes an ask, while a marketable sell consumes a bid. A trade feed may expose initiator information directly or require inference from trade flags or quote location. The home scanner does not perform that classification, so its pressure score must not be relabeled as buy-volume share.
How the app surfaces fit
The home page calculates clamp(50 + score × 8) from momentum, 24-hour range location, and a total-volume-to-market-cap proxy. The /dashboard surface reports DeepBook context. The /charts page computes Ichimoku and Keltner states, while /signals and server alerts can apply separate rules.
Agreement can be useful context—for example, positive momentum alongside deeper visible bids—but it still does not prove causation. Do not invent a shared threshold across surfaces. Note timestamps because a provider snapshot, an order-book sample, and a candle close may refer to different moments.
Compare like with like
Use the same market, quote currency, depth band, and observation window. For an order book, specify how many levels or what percentage from mid-price is included. For trades, specify the time window and whether values are quantity or notional. For the scanner, preserve its stated heuristic meaning.
A balanced ratio does not imply a quiet market, and an imbalanced ratio does not ensure price movement. Spread, replenishment, cancellations, latency, and trade size all affect execution.
Worked comparison of resting and executed pressure
Consider an invented one-minute observation in a fictional market.
- Visible bids
- 20 units × $100 = $2,000 notional
- Visible asks
- 10 units × $101 = $1,010 notional
- Resting bid share
- $2,000 / ($2,000 + $1,010) = 66.4%
- Executed flow
- $700 buyer-initiated; $900 seller-initiated
The sampled book is bid-heavy by visible notional while completed flow is seller-heavy. Both statements can be true, and neither is equivalent to the app’s price-based pressure score.
Common interpretation traps
- Calling resting bids “longs” and asks “shorts” rather than open orders.
- Comparing an instantaneous book snapshot with a long trade window without timestamps.
- Using raw token quantity across different prices or markets when notional is the relevant comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Does more bid notional mean price must rise?+
No. Bids may be canceled, moved, filled, or overwhelmed, and the visible sample excludes hidden or out-of-range liquidity.
Can buy and sell executed volume be unequal?+
Every trade has a buyer and seller, but aggressor classification assigns the trade to the side that crossed the spread. “Buy volume” usually means buyer-initiated volume.
Is home pressure an order-book imbalance?+
No. It is a clamped heuristic based on price changes, range, and a volume proxy, independent of DeepBook bid and ask notional.