Lesson 12

Absorption and exhaustion on the footprint

A footprint shows, inside each bar, how many contracts traded at the bid and at the offer at every price. It is the closest look at the auction you can get. Two patterns matter most at extremes: absorption and exhaustion.

In one lineAbsorption: lots of aggression, no progress. Exhaustion: the aggression simply stops.

Reading a footprint

Each row is a price. The left number is contracts sold at the bid, the right number contracts bought at the offer. Big numbers on one side show where aggression concentrated.

Two simulated bars. Left: heavy buying into the high, but a seller fills all of it and price goes no higher. Right: the buying fades to almost nothing at the top. Illustration from simulated prices, not a real session.

How we read it: delta only

Bid × ask shows both sides of every price. That is the full auction, and it is worth learning on. On our own charts we collapse each row to one number: delta = contracts bought at the offer − contracts sold at the bid. A positive number means buyers won that price; negative, sellers did. Small wins stay grey, big ones turn green (buyers) or red (sellers), and the biggest fill the whole row.

The same two bars the way our footprint charts show them: one column per bar, one delta number per price, the candle drawn through it, and the bar's totals in the strip underneath. Absorption: the two biggest buy wins sit at the top and price still went no higher. Exhaustion: the top rows are won by almost nothing. Illustration from simulated prices, not a real session.

Why only delta

The question at every price is who won. Two numbers make you do the subtraction in your head, at every row, in every bar. Delta gives you the answer directly.
The eye goes straight to what matters. A filled green row at a high that did not go higher is absorption. Small numbers at the top are exhaustion. You see both at a glance.
Less on the screen, faster decisions. Half the numbers, and colour that already tells you the winner.
Nothing is lost. The other numbers still matter, so they sit in a strip under each bar instead: the bar's delta, the session's cumulative delta, total volume, and volume per second. The totals are one glance down; the price column stays clean, showing only who won at each price.
One thing to remember. A row's delta hides how much traded there: +50 can be 60 against 10, or 1,050 against 1,000. When size at one price matters, check the volume there too.

The difference, plainly

Absorption. Aggressive orders keep hitting a level and a large passive order soaks them up. Effort without result. If the passive side holds, price usually turns.
Exhaustion. Aggression dries up at the extreme; there is no one left willing to pay higher. The auction ends for lack of interest.
Both need context. At the edge of value or an earlier extreme they mean something. In the middle of a range, much less.

Key terms

FootprintBid and offer volume at every price inside each bar.

AbsorptionHeavy aggression filled by a passive order; price stalls.

ExhaustionAggression fades to nothing at an extreme.

Effort vs resultHow much volume it took to move price, and how far it moved.

Try it

At the next swing high on a footprint, look at the top two rows. Big numbers with no follow-through, or tiny numbers? Write down which, then see how the swing ended.

AXIS Desk · AMT Fundamentals · free. Education only, not trade advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss; past patterns do not guarantee future results.