For traders who are done being inconsistent and want a real process.
Footprint Absorption
Sellers keep hitting the bid. Price refuses to move. Somebody bigger is on the other side. Run it, break it, then find it on a footprint yourself.
The idea in one minute
Every trade has two sides. One side is in a hurry and uses a market order. The other side is patient and was already sitting there with a limit order.
Resting limit orders to buy are the bid, and resting limit orders to sell are the offer. The side in a hurry is called aggressive, the patient side passive. When sellers are in a hurry, they hit the bid: they sell straight into those resting buy orders. Normally, enough of that and the bid gets used up, so price ticks lower. Absorption is when it does not. The sellers keep hitting, the volume at that price keeps growing, and price will not go through. Every time the bid is taken, it comes right back.
That tells you something simple. A patient buyer with more size than the sellers is sitting at that price and taking everything they throw at it. Like a wave hitting a wall: all that energy, and the wall does not move.
A footprint splits each bar into its prices. Every row is one price. The left number is volume that traded on the bid, which means a seller hit it. The right number is volume that traded on the offer, which means a buyer lifted it. The stronger the colour behind a number, the bigger it is.
Under each bar, Δ is delta: buying minus selling for that bar.
A very large number on the bid side at or near the low, bigger than anything around it, and price does not trade lower after it. The selling was real. It just did not work.
Run the absorption
On the left is the order book at the low: resting bids, the price, resting offers. On the right is what actually traded at each price, the same way a footprint shows it: sold into the bid on the left, bought at the offer on the right. Press play and watch the bid at the low.
Go deeper: why you only see 40 on the bid
A buyer who wants a thousand contracts does not show a thousand on the order book. That would tell everyone what they are doing. So they show a small piece and reload it every time it gets taken. Many platforms can do this for you automatically. It is called an iceberg order, because only the tip shows.
That is why the order book alone can fool you. The bid looks thin. The footprint tells the truth, because it shows what actually traded at that price, and that number keeps climbing while the bid keeps coming back.
It also explains what happens after. Many of the traders who sold into that bid are now short from the low. If price lifts, they are wrong, and when they buy back to get out, that buying helps push price further away.
It works at highs too
At a low, a patient buyer absorbs aggressive sellers. At a high it is the mirror image: a patient seller absorbs aggressive buyers. Flip between them and look where the big number sits.
Spot it
Four footprints. In each one, tap the exact row where absorption happened. Careful: there is a big number in every chart that is not absorption.
How I use it
Absorption at a level I marked before the session is one of the first things I look for. When price comes into the edge of the prior session's value area (the prices where about 70% of its volume traded), a prior high or low, or a clear supply or demand zone, I want to see who shows up there.
If aggressive sellers pile into that level and price refuses to go through, somebody is defending it with size. But I do not buy the absorption itself. I wait for the reaction: the selling fades, price lifts off the level, and the sellers who sold into that bid are now on the wrong side. That is my confirmation.
If the bid gets pulled and price slices through, the level is gone. I do not argue with it.
Checkpoint
Checkpoint4 quick questions on absorption
Sellers hit the bid at the low for 600 contracts and price never trades one tick lower. What is this?
The bid at the low keeps showing about 40 contracts, no matter how much gets sold into it. What does that suggest?
Where can absorption happen?
The bid that was absorbing all the selling suddenly disappears. What is the risk?
Recap
- Absorption is heavy aggression that fails to move price, because a bigger passive order is taking it.
- On the footprint: a very large print at the extreme, and no follow-through after it.
- On the order book: the bid, or the offer at a high, keeps refilling, while the footprint shows far more traded there than the book ever showed.
- It only lasts while that order stays. Wait for price to react before you trust it.
Want to know which levels are worth watching for absorption in the first place? That is auction market theory and volume profile, and it is exactly where the Mentorship starts.
The Mentorship
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