Time and Sales

Time and Sales — the Tape — is one of the most direct windows order flow traders have into what is actually happening in a market. Every print is a real, executed transaction: a buyer met a seller at a price, and size changed hands. Read it well and you stop guessing about who is in control and start watching the auction unfold trade by trade.

This guide covers what the Tape shows, the four order types, the sweeps that signal aggression, and the three concepts — aggression, speed, and absorption — that turn a stream of prints into tradeable information.

What the Tape Shows

The Tape is a "receipt" of all the market orders going through. For every transaction you can see the time, the size or volume of lots traded, and the type of trade: how it transacted. That last piece is what makes the Tape valuable: it tells you whether the buyer or the seller was the aggressor on each individual print.

There are four order types you will see on the Time and Sales:

• Bid
• Below Bid
• Ask
• Above Ask

An ask trade is telling you that a buyer bought x qty lots on the ask. A bid trade is telling you that a seller sold x qty lots on the bid. Above ask is telling you that a buyer is sweeping the current ask and the next price up. You'll see the transaction come through as ask and then above ask. Below bid is the opposite of the above ask: a seller is selling enough contracts to take out the bid and the next price below it.

The bid/ask split tells you which side took the trade. The above/below variants tell you the taker was big enough — or in enough of a hurry — to clear more than one price level in a single shot.

Sweeps: Above Ask and Below Bid

The above ask and below bid trades are usually just referred to as "sweeps." The participants are trading large enough size that they take both the current bid or ask and the next level above or below in a single transaction. These sweeps are considered aggressive. We want to take note of this aggressive behavior.

A sweep matters because the participant was not willing to wait. They didn't post a passive order and let the market come to them. They crossed the spread and kept going. When sweeps cluster on one side of the book, especially after a stretch of more balanced trade, that's a signal that someone is making a decision rather than reacting to one.

Sweeps also pair cleanly with the DOM: the DOM shows the resting size on each side, and the Tape shows what just got eaten.

Watch the Tape in Action

Before getting into the three concepts, it helps to see the Tape moving in real time. One of our founders gives a quick breakdown on trading with the Time and Sales and how to use it in your own trading:

The Three Concepts: Aggression, Speed, Absorption

Once you can read the four order types and recognize a sweep, the next step is interpreting patterns of prints. Three concepts do most of the heavy lifting: aggression, absorption, and speed.

Aggression

Aggression is what we watch for on the Tape to see how participants are responding to each other. If someone is slamming the bid and below bid, we want to make a mental note of that. Conversely, if someone is slamming the ask and above ask, we want to keep track of that as well. Often in areas of interest you'll see one side in control, and then all the sudden an aggressive response from the other side. These can be potential turns in the market and perhaps a good place for entry.

How do you spot this aggression? It can show up two ways:

• Non-stop trading from one side, firing off many small-size lots in rapid succession.
• The same volley of small lots followed by sweeps of the book in larger lot sizes — the above ask and below bid prints we noted earlier.

Either pattern says the same thing: a participant has decided and is acting on that decision instead of waiting. Aggression near a known liquidity zone or a rebid/reoffer area is more meaningful than aggression in the middle of nowhere. Context matters as much as the prints.

Absorption

Absorption can be stated simply: if you see aggressive buying or selling like we just covered and price is not moving, that indicates absorption.

If aggressive buying is seen on Tape and price doesn't move, then it's likely someone on the other side is absorbing that buying pressure and holding price. They are reloading the offer into the buying. Usually the buying stops and price will start to drop because the seller in this case is still selling.

However, if the seller in this example does not continue and the buyer does, we can potentially see a large move to the upside because now that seller is offside. They sold all they could, and the buyer is now squeezing them out of their position. So now we have the original buyer initiating their buying and the seller is now being forced to cover (buy) their existing short position.

Absorption is the setup; the squeeze is the resolution. Spotting it requires watching two things at once — the Tape for the aggressive prints, and price for the lack of movement that confirms someone on the other side is taking it. When that lopsided pressure finally breaks one way, the move tends to be quick.

Speed

Speed is one of the most important tools we use when executing reversal trades or rebid trades. How quickly orders are coming through is also a measure of aggression, and it indicates someone wants to get business done right now. Speed is often the most important concept to use in tape reading.

Let's say you start to see sweeps come in above ask, they follow through, price starts moving in their direction, and then that activity picks up very quickly. That is telling you that someone is rushing into the market and they're in a hurry. This is tradable information: you have aggressive buying and a rush of it.

Speed is also what separates a print that matters from one that doesn't. A 200-lot trade in a market that's been quiet for ten seconds reads differently than the same trade buried in a stream of constant prints. The Tape's pace is the context.

How Tape Reading Pairs with the DOM

The Tape and the DOM are complementary. The DOM is the order book: resting bids and offers waiting to be filled. The Tape is the running record of what actually got filled. Watching them together separates traders who guess at intent from traders who can describe it.

A common pattern: the DOM shows a wall of resting offers above price. The Tape shows aggressive buying — ask prints, then above ask sweeps — chewing through that wall print by print. When the wall is gone and the Tape keeps printing on the offer, the DOM tells you there's nothing left to slow the move. For a deeper look at pull/stack behavior, iceberg orders, and how to read resting liquidity, see the DOM guide.

Where to Apply It

Tape reading is a tool, not a setup. You use it to confirm or reject a thesis you already have based on structure — a level on the volume profile, a liquidity zone, a prior swing where a rebid or reoffer might form. Without that structural context, the Tape is just noise scrolling past.

A few of the highest-leverage applications:

• Confirming entries at liquidity zones. When price returns to a known liquidity zone, the Tape tells you whether the response is aggressive or passive. Aggression in your direction at the level is the green light.
• Spotting rebids and reoffers. When price pulls back to a prior area of interest and the Tape shows absorption — aggressive selling that doesn't move price lower — that's often the rebid working in real time.
• Executing the entry itself. Once you've decided where you want to be, the Tape's speed and aggression tell you when to push the button. This is the point and click discipline — knowing the trade is the easy part; pulling the trigger when the Tape confirms is what separates a plan from a fill.

Open your time and sales window, watch the four order types print, and start tagging what you see: the sweeps, the bursts of speed, the absorption holds. The Tape rewards screen time. Read enough of it and the patterns stop feeling random.