Zero print

A row where one side printed nothing at all, while the other side traded normally. It is a small, specific fact, and being specific is what makes it useful.

What a zero print is

Inside a footprint bar, every row has two halves — volume that traded at the bid, and volume that traded at the ask. See how to read a footprint bar if that split is new to you.

A zero print is a row where one half is zero and the other half traded a meaningful amount.

Not "small". Zero. Price passed through that level and one side of the book never got filled there.

Why that happens

A row ends up one-sided when price moves through a level faster than the passive side can be worked. Buyers lifted every offer on the way up and nothing traded at the bid; or sellers hit every bid on the way down and nothing traded at the ask. The level was crossed, not negotiated.

That is a description of what the tape did. It is not a prediction, and OrderVane does not treat it as one — it marks where the level is and whether price has come back.

What it is not

Three ideas sit close together and get mixed up. They are different objects.

The first two are the ones OrderVane draws, and the split between them is deliberate: a zero print is about a level inside the range, an unfinished auction is about the extreme. OrderVane checks only interior rows for zero prints and leaves the first and last row to the unfinished-auction test, so the same bar never produces both marks for the same price.

Single prints come from Market Profile, where the unit is a time period rather than a price ladder. The name is similar; the object is not.

What the line looks like

For each closed bar, OrderVane scans the interior rows and marks the ones that qualify. The mark is a thin solid line extended to the right, with a small ZP label.

The colour tells you which side was empty:

• Cyan — nothing traded at the ask. Only sellers printed there.
• Mint — nothing traded at the bid. Only buyers printed there.

The line is solid, which separates it at a glance from the gold dashed naked POC and the unfinished-auction mark. Only untouched lines carry the ZP label; faded ones drop it, because by then the label is clutter.

The threshold that matters

One side being zero is not enough on its own. A row where one side traded 2 contracts and the other traded 0 is noise, not structure.

Zero print min side volume (10 by default) sets how much the non-empty side must have traded for the row to qualify. Raise it on a busy instrument if the chart gets crowded; lower it if you are watching a thin one.

When the line stops

Same lifecycle as the other level families. A line stops at the bar where price touched that level — the bar's high-to-low range covering the price, wicks included. From there it drops to a faint version for a few bars (Level lifecycle fade bars, 3 by default) and is then removed.

The touch test asks one thing: did price reach this level again. It does not ask how long price stayed or how much traded when it got there. That keeps the mark honest about what it actually knows.

Settings

Also in the on-chart quick menu under LEVELS. Zero prints are part of OrderVane Pro, which is where footprint cells live.

Honest limits

• Interior rows only. The bar's highest and lowest rows are excluded by design — those belong to the unfinished-auction test.
• Closed bars only. The bar still forming is not scanned; its distribution is not final yet.
• It depends on your data feed. A zero print is a claim that one side printed nothing. If your broker does not report a price-by-price breakdown for a stretch, OrderVane draws no cells there and therefore no zero prints — it does not guess.
• It is a description, not a signal. The mark says a level traded one-sided and whether price has returned. What to do with that is your call; OrderVane does not place orders and does not tell you which way to go.

Related

• Stacked imbalance zones — consecutive one-sided rows forming a band
• Unfinished auction — both sides still trading at a bar's extreme
• Naked POC — a bar's most-traded price that has not been retested
• How to read a footprint bar — where these rows come from
• All docs