Limit order
A limit order is an instruction to buy at or below a set price, or sell at or above it, that rests in the order book until it is matched or cancelled. Resting limit orders are the displayed liquidity on the DOM and the passive side of every trade.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Mechanics
A buy limit at a price below the current ask joins the bid side of the book at that price. It fills only when a seller is willing to trade at or below it. A sell limit above the current bid joins the ask side and waits for a buyer. Orders at the same price are generally matched in time priority: whoever arrived first fills first.
A limit order sent at a price that is already available, such as a buy limit at or above the ask, does not wait; it executes immediately and behaves as an aggressor. It is then called a marketable limit order.
Limit orders on the DOM
- Each row of the DOM is the sum of resting limit orders at that price: bids on one side, offers on the other.
- Size that appears and disappears without trading was placed and pulled; only the trade columns confirm execution.
- A level that keeps refilling as it is hit suggests a participant working a large order in pieces, sometimes called an iceberg, though the ladder alone cannot prove it.
- Displayed size is a promise that can be cancelled. Spoofing exploits this by showing size with no intention to trade.
In Senzoukria
The heatmap page draws the book as a DOM ladder at the exact height of each price, with an option to show the bid × ask sizes inside the band, while the L2 panel on the right keeps the ladder as a table. The heatmap itself is the history of that resting liquidity over time: bands that persist, thicken or vanish are limit orders being placed, refilled or pulled.
Depth requires a feed that provides it. The tick export and the footprint use trades only; the interface says explicitly that the broker's tick history contains transactions and no order book, so no resting size is invented for historical bars.
Reading resting size against flow
| Aggressive volume | Resting size | Price | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Keeps refilling | Holds | Absorption by limit orders |
| High | Emptied | Moves through | Liquidity consumed, continuation |
| Low | Large, then pulled | Moves through | Displayed size was not defended |
| Low | Large and stable | Stalls | Untested; nothing proven yet |
Related
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Frequently asked questions
- Do limit orders show up on a footprint chart?
- Only when they fill. A footprint records executed trades split by aggressor, so a resting buy limit that gets hit shows as volume at the bid. Unfilled limit orders are visible on the DOM and the heatmap, not on the footprint.
- Is a limit order always cheaper than a market order?
- It avoids slippage because the fill price is fixed, but it may not fill at all if price does not reach it, or fills only when price is moving against you. The cost of a limit order is uncertainty of execution rather than uncertainty of price.
- What is an iceberg order?
- A limit order that displays only a fraction of its full size and refills the displayed part as it is executed. On the DOM it looks like a level that keeps reloading after being hit. The ladder shows the refills but cannot by itself confirm a single hidden order behind them.