Depth

The Market Depth Tool helps you to quickly understand the orders and trading activity for a specific stock.

The tool includes the traditional order book table displaying all the open orders for a stock, with the buy orders on the left and the sell orders on the right. Orders are grouped by price level.

The Market Depth Tool also displays a list of recent trades on the far right side of the table. The trades are grouped by price level, with the most recent trades at the top.

The depth chart is a visual representation of the orders and it animates changes in the order book. As orders are entered, modified, cancelled, or executed, the bars will expand or contract accordingly. The animations allows you to easily see the flow of orders and how they are impacting price.

The chart also displays the auction price and volume as a blue bar during market opening and closing phases, and any intraday halts.

The Market Depth can be replayed and reviewed. The last 90 days trading activity is accessible.

Market Depth can be displayed on a consolidated or individual exchange basis.

Access

• press D
• click the Depth button in the Stock Tools section of the Toolbar
• or select the Depth option in the Tools menu

Market depth is also displayed in a pop-up window when you hover your mouse over any code within Spark. This allows you to quickly review the market depth of a stock without changing any of your windows or screen layout.

Tips

Hover over a depth bar or bid/offer price to display the individual orders at that price level.

Hold Alt over a depth bar or bid/offer line to display the volume at and ahead of that price, and its average price and value.

Set an order age time to highlight orders in the depth chart that were entered after the set time period.

Hover over the blue auction bar to reveal details of the auction.

Set Auction Bars to display as Needles or Hidden to assist analysing the depth during busy auction phases.

Press space twice quickly to toggle freezing of the depth.

To change the default settings of the pop-up market depth window, adjust them in the Quick Popup. The depth settings in the Quick Popup will be replicated in the pop-up market depth window throughout Spark.

If you are in consolidated mode quickly switch to single market views using short-cut keys.

Chart

Green bars represent buy orders and red bars, sell orders. The height of a bar corresponds to the aggregated volume of all orders at that price level.

The light grey shaded area in the chart highlights the trading range for the day.

The three vertical blue lines represent the following

• Dashed line - Previous days close
• Solid line - Last sale price
• Thin Line - Volume Weighted Average Price

Replay

You can replay and review the market depth using the keyboard shortcut keys or the replay settings in the tool.

The last 90 days trading activity can be replayed via the Depth tool.

You can also enter dates and times directly to start a depth replay from a specific point in time. Press Space, type in a time/date, e.g. 10:25, and press Enter.

During a replay of market depth, a blue vertical line will appear on any associated stock chart indicating the current time position of the replay.

Auctions

When a stock is in an auction phase a blue bar appears in the depth chart. This bar indicates the price that the auction will take place at and the expected auction volume.

During an auction the last price field throughout Spark has a light blue background. This indicates the price displayed is the Auction Price rather than the last traded price.

Auction details are also displayed at the top of the Course of Trades section of the tool.

Hover your mouse over the auction bar or last price field to show additional information about the auction.

Post Auction

You can see what the depth will be after the auction by choosing the Hidden Auction Bars option to hide the executing orders.

However, the Needles option allows you to see the post auction depth while also seeing the executing orders.

The thin lines will execute at auction, whereas the normal width bars show the depth after the auction.

At the auction price, the surplus is shown as a normal width bar and the thread of the executing volume on the surplus side is shown on top of it for visibility.

Depth Table Columns

Course of Trades Columns

Auction Columns

The following columns appear at the top of the Course of Trades section if the stock is in an auction phase.

Settings

File

See here.

Select

This menu only appears when consolidating.

Display

Cap Bars

Setting a cap level restricts the chart to only display depth bars within x% of either side of the current last sale price or auction price.

Depth bars are scaled against the tallest bar within the displayed range. If you deselect the Scale option, then the vertical axis maximum will be the maximum bar volume regardless of whether it's within the visible range.

Capping the bars is useful if you want to focus on the orders close to the current market price.

Auction Bars

Trade Bars

Aggregate

Age

The age setting allows you to highlight orders that have been entered into the market within a specified time period by making them appear bright. Orders outside of the set time will appear dulled.

You can view the time an order was entered by hovering over a depth bar or bid/offer figure in the depth table.

If you set the age to 1,2 or 5 days, all orders entered today/previous x days will be highlighted. It's not based on clock time.

Replay

Replay Nav

Use the Nav chart to quickly move to a specific point in time within the last 90 days.

The Nav chart plots the share price of the stock for the selected period. Click the period buttons below the chart to alter the displayed period.

The Nav chart can be expanded to take the full width of the controls by clicking the arrows in the top right corner. Click the arrows again to unexpand it.

Alerts

You can set price levels and be alerted via the Alert ticker when these are met.

The set price levels are highlighted in the depth table with a pink background and in the charts with a pink line. A dashed pink line shows the alert is active. A solid pink line shows the alert has triggered.

If an alert has triggered, and therefore no longer being monitored, the price entry box will have a pink border.

See here for more about Alerts.