Orderflow Toolbox: CVD, Open Interest, Funding, Net Position, Liquidations
10 min read
Most traders graduate from candle-only analysis to orderflow because the candle tells you what price did — orderflow tells you what the market did to get there. AlertaChart's Orderflow Toolbox is a Pro-tier stack of sub-panes and overlays that you can compose under the main chart to read the institutional flow underneath each candle.
Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD)
CVD plots the running difference between buy-initiated and sell-initiated volume. If more aggressors hit the ask than hit the bid, CVD rises. If sellers are dominant, CVD falls. Read it as: "is the orderbook absorbing this move or is it being driven by aggressive flow?" When price makes a new high but CVD doesn't follow, you're seeing absorption — passive resting orders are eating aggressive buys. That's a classic exhaustion tell.
Open Interest (OI)
OI is the total number of futures contracts that haven't yet been closed. Rising OI + rising price = new longs piling in (bullish continuation, but watch for crowded positioning). Rising OI + falling price = new shorts piling in. Falling OI + rising price = shorts covering. Falling OI + falling price = longs liquidating.
The OI pane renders only for futures rows because OI is futures-only. Heavy OI growth into a swing high is a warning — leverage is rising into resistance, which sets up the conditions for a violent flush if the level breaks the wrong way.
Funding Rate
Funding is the price tax/refund Binance Futures applies every 8 hours to balance longs vs shorts. Positive funding means longs pay shorts. Sustained high positive funding (above ~0.05%/8h) means crowded long positioning — funding-paying longs eventually fold, which is one of the cleanest contrarian signals on crypto. Sustained negative funding around bottoms means crowded shorts about to get squeezed.
Net Position (Net Long / Net Short)
Two panes that show the cumulative net position estimate split by side, derived from the (oiDelta × taker-flow ratio) formula made famous by mmt.gg. Read it as: "are longs or shorts adding to their position?" When Net Long is making new highs while price stalls, longs are in late. When Net Short flips negative on a price low, shorts are covering — often the bottom signal.
Liquidation Heatmap and Bubbles
Two visualisations of the same dataset: liquidation events from Binance Futures. The Liquidation Heatmap paints horizontal bands where leveraged longs and shorts would get liquidated given current leverage and OI. Heavy density above price = magnetised levels where shorts will trigger a squeeze if price runs there. Bubbles is the realtime view: every time a liquidation prints, a coloured bubble appears at that price/time on the chart.
Volume Bubbles
Renders aggregate-trade events larger than a configurable threshold as bubbles on the chart, coloured by aggressor side. Useful for spotting large prints that don't show up in the volume histogram because they're a single trade rather than a whole-bar aggregate.
Aggregate Trades (AGGR)
A separate full-screen view that streams realtime trades from multiple exchanges, sortable, filterable, and grouped. Available from the chart's top toolbar.
Premium gating
The full Orderflow Toolbox is Pro-only. Free plan users see the entry points in the chart toolbar but clicking them opens the upgrade modal. The data feeds are expensive to run; gating them keeps the platform sustainable.