Lesson 03
Orders: who actually moves price
There are two kinds of order that matter here. One waits in the book; the other takes what is waiting. Price only moves when the takers use up everything resting at a level.
Resting and aggressive
- A limit order sits in the book at a price you choose. Bids wait below the market, offers wait above. They are passive.
- A market order trades immediately against whatever is resting. A market buy takes offers; a market sell hits bids. It is aggressive.
Every trade has a buyer and a seller, so you can never say there were "more buyers than sellers". What you can say is which side was the aggressor.
The buyer needed 25 contracts. The 18 offered at .25 were not enough, so the order took 7 more at .50 and the last price ticked up.
Why this matters for everything else
Volume at a price, delta and footprints all come from this. Volume counts contracts traded; delta counts which side was the aggressor. A level where aggressive buying keeps arriving but price will not go higher means someone large is selling passively into it. Lesson 12 comes back to that.
Key terms
Try it
Watch the book for five minutes around a busy level. Note when a level disappears: did the size get traded away (aggression) or pulled (the resting trader changed their mind)?
AXIS Desk · AMT Fundamentals · free. Education only, not trade advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss; past patterns do not guarantee future results.