Stacked imbalance zones

One imbalanced row is a detail. Several in a row is a band — and the band is what stays on the chart.

From one row to a zone

On a footprint bar, a row is imbalanced when one half traded at least 3x the other (Footprint imbalance ratio). OrderVane marks that half-cell with a coloured chip — see how to read a footprint bar for the cell language.

A single imbalanced row is common. What is less common is several of them stacked consecutively in the same direction, and that is what OrderVane turns into a zone.

The threshold is Footprint stacked imbalance bins — 3 by default, adjustable from 2 to 10. Three consecutive rows leaning the same way become a price band running from the highest of those rows to the lowest.

What breaks a zone

A zone does not end when price touches it. It ends when price goes through it, and which way counts:

That asymmetry follows from what the zone is. A buy zone is a band where buyers repeatedly took the offer; price trading below the whole band means that structure did not hold. Coming back into the band is not the same event, so OrderVane does not retire the zone for it.

This is different from the other level families — naked POC, zero print and unfinished auction all end on a touch. A zone ends on a break.

The drawing tells you the state

This is the part worth learning, because the zone changes appearance as its situation changes.

Over past bars — boundary lines only. No fill. A zone that painted a texture over the cells would fight with the numbers underneath, and the cells are the more detailed information. So the interior stays empty and you see only the top and bottom edges.

To the right of the last bar — hatched fill. This is empty chart, so filling it costs nothing and the band reads as a band. It is also the part you actually use: the zone projected forward to where price has not been yet.

Thin zones — a solid band instead. Below about 10 px of height, two boundary lines stop reading as a zone and start reading as two unexplained lines. At that size OrderVane draws a translucent band instead, darker on the projected side.

Broken zones — a faint band, no outline. A zone that has been broken drops its edges entirely and becomes a low-opacity band for a few bars before disappearing. Dying zones and live zones should not look alike.

Age — a slow fade. An unbroken zone gets gradually lighter as it ages, so the recent ones stand out without the old ones vanishing abruptly.

Keeping the chart readable

Zones accumulate. Three settings and one rule keep that under control:

The rule is overlap merging: when a zone covers 60% or more of one already being drawn, only the newer one is kept. Without it, a range that keeps producing stacks in the same area buries itself in near-identical bands.

Note what the age limit does not do — it does not decide the zone was wrong. It stops drawing it, because a band from 200 bars ago is usually not what you are looking at.

Honest limits

• It depends on the imbalance ratio. Change Footprint imbalance ratio and the zones change with it. The zone is a consequence of the row test, not an independent measurement.
• Vertical by default. Rows are compared against their own opposite half. Diagonal comparison — ask at one price against the bid one tick below — is a separate switch and is off by default.
• Closed bars build it, the current bar does not. The forming bar's distribution is not final.
• A zone is a description, not a signal. It marks where consecutive one-sided rows occurred and whether price has since traded through them. What that means for a trade is your call — OrderVane does not place orders and does not tell you which way to go.

Related

• How to read a footprint bar — imbalance, POC and the rest of the cell language
• Naked POC · Zero print · Unfinished auction — the level families that end on a touch
• All docs