How to Read the DOM (Depth of Market)
The DOM is the live order book — the ladder of bids and offers resting around the current price. It shows displayed liquidity and its changes; it does not by itself establish hidden size or intent. Here is how to read the ladder.
Senzoukria · Learn · Updated 13 September 2026
The DOM — Depth of Market, also called the order book or the ladder — is the rawest view of order flow there is. It is a live column of prices with the resting bids stacked below the market and the resting offers stacked above it. The liquidity heatmap, the footprint — show depth history and executed trades respectively; the footprint is not a reconstruction of the ladder.
Trading off the ladder itself — measuring the spread, the cumulative size behind it and when a large displayed order deserves caution — is covered in the DOM trading guide. Choosing the platform that shows you the ladder is a separate question, handled in DOM trading software.
Anatomy of the ladder
- Price column (centre) — each row is one price level, best bid and best offer in the middle, where the spread sits.
- Bid size (below) — resting buy limit orders waiting under the market.
- Ask size (above) — resting sell limit orders waiting over the market.
- Volume / last trade columns — what is actually executing at each level right now, so you can see aggression meeting the resting size.
What the resting size tells you
Stacked liquidity
Several large levels lined up on one side is a liquidity shelf — a zone the market would have to chew through to continue. Stacked bids below price can hold a pullback; stacked offers above can cap a rally. Whether they actually hold is the next question.
Pulling and spoofing
A reduction in displayed size can reflect a cancellation, execution or change in the available feed. Use event data to distinguish those observations. Disappearance near price does not prove intent or manipulation.
Absorption and icebergs
Substantial aggressive volume with limited price progress is consistent with passive liquidity meeting it. Replenishment can have several explanations; it does not alone confirm a native iceberg. CME documents the difference between anonymous order-level MBO and aggregated MBP. Check what the feed and application actually retain.
The DOM’s big limitation (and the fix)
The raw DOM only shows you now — it flickers and resets every tick, so it is hard to see how a level behaved over the last few minutes. That is exactly what a liquidity heatmap solves: it records the DOM through time so walls, pulls and refills become visible as patterns instead of a blur. Read the ladder for the instant, the heatmap for the history.
Key takeaway: the DOM shows displayed depth. Compare changes with executions and preserve missing-data limits; the ladder cannot reveal every participant or hidden intention.
See it on live data
Senzoukria pairs the DOM with a liquidity heatmap and native footprint from your NinjaTrader, Apex / Rithmic or crypto feed — so you read resting liquidity, its history and the aggression hitting it in one place. Start with a $9 first month, then $29.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the DOM in trading?
- The DOM (Depth of Market), also called the order book or ladder, is a live list of the resting limit orders around the current price. It shows how many contracts are bid at each price below the market and offered at each price above it — the liquidity waiting to be filled.
- What is the difference between the DOM and a footprint chart?
- The DOM shows resting, passive limit orders — liquidity that has not traded yet. A footprint shows executed, aggressive market orders — what already traded. The DOM describes displayed resting liquidity; the footprint describes executions. They are two sides of the same order flow.
- What is spoofing on the DOM?
- A cancellation is observable; manipulative intent is not established by a DOM snapshot. A wall disappearing near price can have multiple explanations. Do not label every pulled order as spoofing.
- What is an iceberg order?
- An iceberg exposes only part of its total quantity. Repeated displayed replenishment can be consistent with hidden reserve, but aggregate depth alone cannot distinguish it from multiple independent orders or prove participant identity.