Reading The Heatmap

Color And Direction

• Diverging signals (like imbalance) paint two directions from a neutral center — one color for bid/up pressure, another for ask/down.
• Sequential signals (like spread, volume, or volatility) run light-to-dark for low-to-high.
• The color scale is the signal's visualization mode; it is separate from the threshold an alert uses.

What To Compare

• Direction: whether pressure leans bid-side or ask-side.
• Persistence: whether pressure holds across several cells or flashes once.
• Context: whether price confirms, rejects, or ignores the pressure.
• Extremes: whether the value is unusual relative to the recent distribution.

Clusters Over Cells

A single cell is a data point. The stronger read is usually a cluster — pressure spreading across time on one symbol, or across several symbols at once. Use the map to find the cluster, then the inspector to judge it.

Four Ways To Read The Board: Map, Grid, Stream, Table

• Map is the heatmap — each market's score painted over time, so you see how pressure built or faded.
• Grid is the current candle as a treemap: every scanned market is a tile, sized by how strongly it is scoring right now and colored by its score. The markets with the most conviction are the biggest tiles — a strong long and a strong short of the same strength are the same size, and the color tells you which way. Use it to see what is hot across the whole board at a single glance.
• Stream shows the score history as a flowing river — the most active markets as bands, each band's thickness its conviction. It bands as many markets as the space can label, so every band keeps a readable ticker; a taller river shows more of them. It lines up with the chart candle for candle and pans with it, on desktop and phone alike: drag the river sideways to travel back through the board's history, and the chart travels with it.
• Color the river two ways, from the switch in its top corner. Ticker gives every band its own hue (adjacent bands never share one) to show how pressure rotates between markets. Side paints each band with the same green/red score ramp the heatmap uses, along time — so you read who is bid and who is offered, and see the moment a market flips.
• Stream shares the chart's crosshair. On desktop, hover any moment. On a phone, drag up or down on the river (a press-and-hold works too) — the same guide marks that time on the chart above, and a readout names the band under your finger with its score. Sideways still pans. Use it to see which markets are carrying pressure and how it rotates between them over time.
• Table lists the firing pairs, ranked and sortable.
• All four read the same score and show the same markets, so switching never changes what is being measured — only how you look at it. Hover a tile or band and the chart follows it; click to lock it.
• Your chosen view is yours: switching to a different Trade Desk keeps the face you are on (Stream stays Stream), so you can monitor board after board through the same lens.