Time and Sales

Each entry in the Time and Sales window contains four core fields: timestamp (to the millisecond), price, size (shares traded), and exchange or venue where the transaction occurred. The color coding used by most platforms: green (or default) prints indicate trades at or above the ask price — aggressive buyers lifting the offer. Red prints indicate trades at or below the bid price — aggressive sellers hitting the bid. White or gray prints indicate trades at the midpoint or inside the spread, often representing dark pool fills or negotiated block transactions. The exchange code reveals routing — NYSE, NASDAQ, IEX, and various dark pool venues each have distinct codes. Block prints (unusually large size) at specific price levels are often institutional activity and warrant attention regardless of color.

Individual prints are less informative than the sequence and pace of prints. Rapid green prints accelerating in pace (increasing frequency per second) signal urgency from buyers — someone is aggressively accumulating and willing to pay up. A sudden shift from scattered prints to a dense cluster at a single price level often indicates a large limit order sitting at that level — a potential support or resistance point. Absorption patterns are particularly useful: a long sequence of large red prints at a price level with no price decline indicates buyers are absorbing all the selling without price moving lower — a sign of strong demand. The opposite (large green prints absorbed without price rising) signals selling pressure overhanging the market. These patterns are invisible on standard candlestick charts, which aggregate all prints into OHLC bars.

Level 2 shows the order book — the pending limit orders waiting at various price levels, organized by bid (buyers) and ask (sellers). Time and Sales shows actual completed transactions. Together they provide a complete picture of market microstructure. Level 2 reveals intentions and potential future supply/demand; Time and Sales reveals what is actually happening now. A useful technique: watch Level 2 to see a large bid wall at a price level, then monitor Time and Sales to see whether that bid is actually holding (absorbing selling prints without moving) or getting pulled (disappearing when selling pressure arrives). A bid wall in Level 2 that evaporates when tested reveals a spoof — a fake order designed to create the appearance of demand.

Block trades — transactions of 10,000 shares or more — are significant Time and Sales events. They indicate institutional involvement: mutual funds, hedge funds, market makers, or large retail traders moving meaningful size. Block prints through the ask with acceleration in smaller prints following suggest institutional buying sparking retail momentum. Block prints through the bid with follow-through selling indicate distribution. Block prints at the midpoint (gray prints, often from dark pools) are institutional orders that found a counterpart without displaying in the public order book. Repeated block prints at the same price level — even with small prints absorbing between them — often marks a major support or resistance level that will appear on charts hours later, long after tape readers identified it.