Auction & Order Flow
Why price moves at all — participation, imbalance, value, and the difference between a level and a reason.
Placed after structure and before SMC on purpose. Structure teaches where price turned; this teaches why it turned, and without it every pattern downstream is memorised rather than understood. It is also the honest antidote to the idea that a line drawn on a chart causes anything.
- 1Price is an advertisement
Understand that price moves to find participation, not because buyers outnumber sellers.
Checkpoint: Sequence - 2Balance, imbalance and value
Tell a market rotating inside value from one searching for it.
Checkpoint: Mark the chart - 3Volume profile: what the shape says
Read a distribution rather than a line.
Checkpoint: Mark the chart - 4Point of control and the value areanot written yet
Find the fairest price on a session and say why it matters.
Checkpoint: Mark the chart - 5High and low volume nodesnot written yet
Predict where price travels fast and where it grinds.
Checkpoint: Spot the trap - 6Absorption versus exhaustion
Two identical-looking stalls with opposite meanings.
Checkpoint: Spot the trap - 7Initiative versus responsive activitynot written yet
Name who is in control of a move.
Checkpoint: Call the grade - 8What order flow cannot tell younot written yet
The limits, stated before you spend money on a tool.
Checkpoint: —
Complete all 4 written lessons in this track with an average checkpoint score of 70 or better and you can generate a shareable record of completion. You are at 0/4.
The concepts here are applied in the Trade Playbook, and the engine that grades them is taken apart in how AI chart analysis works.