Why a Bright Band on an Order Book Heatmap Suddenly Disappears
Three things can erase a wall of resting orders. The heatmap shows that it vanished. Here is how to look for the reason.
You are watching a heatmap. Behind the candles there is a bright band at one price, running across the chart for hours. It looks solid. Then, in one candle, it is gone.
What happened to it?
The honest answer is that there are three possible stories, and the picture alone does not choose between them. This article walks through all three, shows what to check, and explains why a bright band is never a promise.
Educational content only. Not financial advice. A heatmap shows where size sat. It does not forecast price.
First, what the band is
On the Orderbook Heatmap, price runs up the side and time runs along the bottom. Each cell shows how much resting size sat at that price at that moment, merged across the exchanges you chose. Brighter means more. Faint means thin.
A band that runs across many candles means size sat at that price for a long time. A band that stops means the size is no longer there.
The Help page gives the reason in one line. The orders at that price were filled, moved or pulled. Those are the three stories.
Story 1: the orders were filled
Someone traded against the resting orders. A buyer hit the asks, or a seller hit the bids, and the resting size was used up.
If this is the story, there should be trades at that price around the time the band ended. Executed trades appear in the Trades tab, which lists every print with its side, size, exchange and time.
Story 2: the orders were moved
The trader who placed the orders did not want to be filled at that price, or wanted a better one. They canceled and placed new orders at a different price. If you look nearby, you may see a new band appear a few levels away.
This is common. Resting orders are not commitments. They can be edited at any time.
Story 3: the orders were pulled
The orders were canceled and not replaced. The size simply left the book. No trade, no new band.
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Sometimes size is canceled as price approaches. Sometimes it is canceled for reasons no chart can show. The heatmap shows that it left. It cannot show why.
How to look for the answer
You cannot always settle it. But you can gather evidence with tools inside the same workspace.
- Note the moment. On the Orderbook Heatmap, find the candle where the band ended.
- Click a heat cell earlier in the band. With the Cursor tool selected and no drawing tool armed, click a heat cell that has recorded depth. A panel called What you clicked opens. It shows the price bucket and the resting size per exchange and market, split into bid and ask. This tells you which exchanges held the size.
- Check the Orderbook Profile. Set PROFILE to Live, then to 1D. If a level is long on 1D but short on Live, the size sat there during the day and has since gone. If it is long on both, it is still there.
- Look at the tape. Open the same coin in the Trades tab and look at prints near that time. Set MIN SIZE to a level that matches the size of the band. The Trades tab has an Open in menu that carries a coin to the Orderbook, the Orderbook Heatmap or Liquidations, so you can keep the same selection across tabs.
- Look for a new band nearby. A band that reappears a few levels away points toward “moved”.
If trades at that price line up with the end of the band, that points toward “filled”. If nothing lines up and no band reappears, “pulled” is a reasonable reading. Reasonable, not certain.
An illustrative example
This example uses made-up numbers and is not market data.
A coin trades around 50. A bright band sits at 48 for most of a morning. At midday, the band ends within one candle.
You open the Trades tab on the same coin and set MIN SIZE high enough to hide small prints. Around midday there is a short run of sell prints at 48 and just below it. The sizes add up to something close to the width of the band. That points toward filled.
Another day, another band at 52. It ends. No large prints at 52. Two levels higher, at 54, a new band appears. That points toward moved.
The third day, a band at 45 just fades. No prints. No new band. That is the “pulled” reading.
Three bands, three different endings. All three looked the same while they lasted.
What this means for how you read a heatmap
Resting liquidity is not a floor. It is a snapshot of intentions, and intentions change.
Three habits follow from that:
- Ask how long. A band that has been there for hours has a different history from one that appeared two candles ago. The Orderbook Profile on a longer window helps here.
- Ask how many exchanges. The What you clicked panel shows whether the size sits on one exchange or several.
- Ask what the tape did. A level that gets traded through leaves marks in the Trades tab.
Many traders watch these levels as support and resistance. That is a way of reading a level. It is not a promise that the level will hold.
If everything looks equally bright
One more practical note. If the heatmap looks washed out, with every level equally bright, or if almost nothing shows, the scale is probably the issue. Open Field settings and adjust SENSITIVITY, or set Floor and Ceiling. A lower ceiling brings out smaller clusters. A higher one keeps only the largest.
Change the scale before you interpret the picture. Otherwise you may be reading a setting, not the market.
Try it
Open the Orderbook Heatmap, click a heat cell and read the What you clicked panel. The full guide is here: How to read a liquidity heatmap. Free during Alpha.
