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Reading the Echo Map

The Echo Map answers one question: where did traders commit, and are they still committed? This guide covers the three layers and the four patterns worth trading.

Layer 1: The Pressure Heatmap​

Every cell is one price bucket during one time bucket. The color is the net delta of trades in that cell - green when buyers were the aggressors, red when sellers were. Brightness scales with how one-sided the trading was.

How to read it:

  • A column of bright green climbing - buyers lifted offers through multiple prices. Initiative buying.
  • Bright red cells at the highs - sellers hit bids as price probed higher. Supply is active there.
  • Dim, mixed cells - two-way rotation. Nobody in control; treat levels as mean-reversion targets.
  • Bright cells that price later revisits - old battlegrounds tend to matter again. Volume memory is the whole premise of the map.

The right edge of the newest column pulses gently - that is the live edge, where the current bar is still forming.

Layer 2: Volume Profile (the left gutter)​

The horizontal bars show total volume at each price for the window you are viewing. Each bar is split green/red by aggressor side.

  • POC (Point of Control) - the amber bar, the single price with the most volume. It acts as a magnet in balanced conditions.
  • Value Area - the dashed band holding roughly the middle 70% of volume. The market's zone of agreement.

The two setups that matter:

  1. Acceptance: price moves above the value area and stays there, building new volume. The market has repriced. Pullbacks to the top of the old value area are buyable in that context.
  2. Rejection: price pokes above the value area, prints thin volume, and falls back inside. Expect rotation back toward the POC.

Layer 3: CVD (the strip below)​

Cumulative Volume Delta sums buyer-initiated minus seller-initiated volume across the session, on the same time axis as the map. It is the truth-teller for the other two layers.

  • Price up + CVD up - flow confirms the move. Trend behavior.
  • Price making highs + CVD flat or falling - absorption. Someone is selling into the push without price breaking yet. The Echo Map badges this state explicitly ("Absorption - sellers hold highs vs price"). It usually resolves with a rotation back down.
  • Price flat + CVD climbing - buyers are accumulating without lifting price. Watch for the break.
  • CVD divergence at a gamma level - the highest-quality fade signal on the map. Flow failing exactly where dealers defend is confluence.

The Four Patterns, In Order of Reliability​

  1. Fade at a wall with divergence - price presses into the Call Wall (or Put Wall), CVD diverges, heatmap shows red cells at the highs. Fade back toward the POC or Anchor.
  2. Value-area acceptance - price accepts above value with CVD confirming. Trade pullbacks in the direction of acceptance, targeting the next gamma level.
  3. POC magnet rotation - inside the value area on a high-gamma day, fade the edges of value back to the POC. The regime chip in the thesis bar tells you when the day is pin/mean-revert.
  4. Flip break - price loses the Gamma Flip with CVD confirming. Character change - stop fading, start following.

Interval and Lens Choices​

  • 1m-5m with the RTH lens for day trading the cash session
  • 15m-1H with 24h for swing context and overnight structure
  • 1D for the position-trader view of where multi-day volume lives
  • Overnight lens before the open: the overnight high/low and where value built overnight are your first reference levels of the day

Every layer can be toggled off. When learning, run one layer at a time for a week each - heatmap first, then profile, then CVD - before trading the fusion.