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. Read correctly, it shows where liquidity is stacked, where it is fake, and where aggressors are absorbing it. Here is how to read the ladder.
Senzoukria · Learn · Updated June 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. Everything else — the liquidity heatmap, the footprint — is a way of making the ladder readable over time.
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 large order that vanishes as price approaches it was not real intent — classic spoofing or repositioning. Watch the behaviour, not the snapshot: a wall only means something if it stays to get hit. Pulled liquidity ahead of price tends to accelerate the move.
Absorption and icebergs
When aggressive market orders pour into a level and it holds — the price does not move even though size is trading — a large passive player is absorbing the flow. If the displayed size keeps refilling as it is hit, that is an iceberg: far more is hidden than the ladder shows. Both mark levels worth respecting.
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 resting intention — where liquidity waits. Never trade a wall on sight; watch whether it holds (absorption), pulls (spoof) or refills (iceberg) when aggression finally reaches it.
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 free preview.
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 is intention; the footprint is action. They are two sides of the same order flow.
- What is spoofing on the DOM?
- Spoofing is placing large resting orders with no intention of filling them, to create a false impression of supply or demand and push other traders around. The tell is that the order is pulled (cancelled) the moment price approaches it, rather than getting hit and holding.
- What is an iceberg order?
- An iceberg is a large order split so only a small piece is visible on the DOM at a time. As aggressors hit the visible size it keeps refilling from the hidden reserve. Icebergs reveal a serious player quietly defending a level — the price keeps absorbing flow without the displayed size matching how much trades.