A normal candle tells you where price opened, closed, and how far it stretched. Useful — but it hides the most interesting part: who was actually buying and selling on the way there. A footprint chart opens the candle up and shows you exactly that.

This guide explains what a footprint chart is, what the numbers inside it mean, and a few simple ways to start using one — without the jargon.

(Quick note: nothing here is financial advice. A footprint chart is a way to see activity, not a signal to follow blindly.)

The idea in one picture

Imagine a normal candle. Now imagine slicing it into rows, one for each price it traded at. In each row you can see how much buying and how much selling happened at that exact price.

That's a footprint chart. Same candle you already know — just with the inside filled in. Instead of "price went up," you get "price went up, but sellers were quietly heavy near the top." That extra detail is the whole point.

What the numbers mean

Most footprint charts show two numbers per price row: the volume that traded on the buy side and the volume on the sell side. Different layouts show this differently, but the common ones are:

Bid x Ask (buy vs sell at each price). Two columns side by side. The right shows aggressive buying, the left shows aggressive selling. You're comparing the two to see who was pushing harder at each level. (There's an important detail in what "aggressive" means here — see the next section.)

Delta. The difference between aggressive buying and aggressive selling. Positive delta means buyers were the aggressors; negative means sellers were. It's a quick "who was pushing" number.

Volume. Just the total that traded at each price — good for spotting the busiest level inside the candle.

You don't need to memorize all of them. Start with delta (who was pushing) and total volume (where the action was).

Aggressive vs passive: who's actually hitting the market

This is the part most beginners miss, and it's what makes a footprint click.

Every trade has two sides: someone impatient and someone patient. This is worth saying plainly, because it's always true — a trade only happens when a market order meets a limit order. One side crosses the spread to take what's there (the market order); the other was resting on the book, providing it (the limit order). No trade exists without both. Every single print on your chart is one aggressive order filling against one passive one.

Aggressive orders (market orders) are the impatient side. An aggressive buyer crosses the spread to buy right now — they "lift the offer." An aggressive seller crosses the spread to sell right now — they "hit the bid." These are the orders that actually move price.

Passive orders (limit orders) are the patient side. These are resting orders sitting on the book, waiting to get filled. A passive seller places a limit sell above and waits; a passive buyer places a limit buy below and waits. They don't chase — they let price come to them.

Here's the key: the footprint columns show the aggressive side.

So when you read delta, you're reading aggression, not the whole story. Delta tells you which side was the impatient one — not which way price will go. That distinction matters, because sometimes the aggressive side is the one that gets trapped.

Which leads straight to absorption.

How to read a footprint chart

Here's a simple way in.

1 — Find the heavy prices. Inside each candle, some price rows have far more volume than others. Those are where the market fought hardest. They often become levels that matter later.

2 — Compare price to delta. Normally a green candle has buyers as the aggressors (positive delta). Sometimes it doesn't — price rises even though sellers were the aggressive ones (negative delta). That mismatch is called a delta divergence, and it usually means the aggressive sellers got absorbed: passive buyers soaked up all that selling and price rose anyway, leaving those sellers trapped. Far from weakness, that often points to a bigger buyer quietly defending the level — though delta is always read with context, never on its own.

3 — Look for a shift. Watch delta from candle to candle. When strong buying suddenly flips to strong selling near a key level, the balance of power may be changing.

4 — Spot absorption. If you see heavy aggressive volume and a big one-sided delta at a price, but the candle barely moves past it, a big passive player is soaking it up — their resting limit orders are absorbing every market order thrown at them. The aggressors are hitting a wall. Price often reacts hard off those spots, because the impatient side just got trapped. (More on this in How to Read Order Flow.)

Simple ways to use it

You don't need a complicated system. A few practical uses:

The footprint doesn't tell you what to do — it tells you what's happening, so you can decide with better information.

Higher-timeframe footprints

One thing beginners miss: a footprint on a tiny timeframe can be noisy. Viewing the footprint on a higher timeframe smooths it out and shows the bigger story — where real buyers and sellers are stacking up over a meaningful chunk of time. A HTF Footprint indicator does this automatically, so you keep the detail without the noise.

What you need to use one

You need a platform that offers real footprint charts with clean order flow data. ATAS does this well and its free trial lets you practice. To skip setup, the Edge Bundle includes a higher-timeframe footprint tool ready to go — but the built-in footprint is plenty to learn on first.

The bottom line

A footprint chart is just a normal candle with the inside revealed: who bought, who sold, and where they fought. Start by finding the heavy prices and checking who won, then build from there. It turns "price went up" into "price went up, but here's what it cost" — and that context is what makes order flow click.

New to all this? Start with How to Read Order Flow for Beginners, then come back here.