SabrTrader Documentation

Market Watch, Depth Chart, and Time & Sales

Market Watch, Depth Chart, and Time & Sales are three lightweight monitoring windows in SabrTrader that sit alongside footprint charts and the SuperDOM. Market Watch answers what is moving across a defined universe of instruments, the Depth Chart answers where resting limit liquidity is stacked away from the inside market, and Time & Sales answers who is executing right now and how fast. All three open blank, require a symbol or symbol list, support duplication into multiple simultaneous instances, and are saved as part of the workspace layout.

Overview: three monitoring windows and what each answers

SabrTrader groups Market Watch, Depth Chart, and Time & Sales together because they share the same purpose: fast, low-overhead market monitoring that supports — but does not replace — the analysis and execution surfaces such as the footprint chart and the SuperDOM.

Window	Question it answers	Data required	Primary output
Market Watch	What is moving across my universe of instruments?	Level 1 (best bid, best ask, last trade)	A grid of rows, one per symbol, with quote and change columns
Depth Chart	Where is resting limit liquidity stacked on each side?	Level 2 (market depth)	A cumulative plot of queued bid and ask size by price
Time & Sales	Who is executing right now, at what size, and how fast?	Level 1 trade stream (tick-by-tick prints)	A chronological, colour-coded list of executions (the tape)

Shared behaviour

• Each window opens blank. No symbol is assumed. Market Watch needs a symbol list or manually added symbols; Depth Chart and Time & Sales each need one symbol selected in the window's symbol selector.
• Each window can be duplicated. Duplicate creates a second instance with the same settings, which you then point at a different symbol or list. Running several instances is the intended workflow, not repeatedly retyping symbols into one window.
• Each window docks into the current workspace and its position, size and settings are stored when the workspace is saved.
• Hover tooltips are available on the settings fields in these windows, so you can confirm what a field does before changing it.

Prerequisites

• An active data connection in the SabrTrader Control Center. See the connection guides for Rithmic, Interactive Brokers, Schwab or Massive/Polygon.
• Level 1 data for Market Watch quotes and for Time & Sales prints.
• Level 2 (market depth) data for the Depth Chart. A trades-only feed produces an empty or extremely shallow depth chart.
• Real-time data for live decisions. On a delayed feed all three windows still populate, but every value is lagged by the feed's delay (commonly 15 minutes) and must not be used for execution.

Feature reference: every window, control and setting

Opening the windows from the New menu

The New menu is SabrTrader's window launcher. It lists every window type the platform can open — charts, SuperDOM, Market Watch, Depth Chart, Time & Sales, and the analysis panels. Selecting an entry creates a new instance of that window and docks it into the active workspace.

1. Open the New menu from the Control Center or workspace toolbar.
2. Select Market Watch, Depth Chart, or Time & Sales.
3. The window appears empty. Assign a symbol list (Market Watch) or a single symbol (Depth Chart, Time & Sales).
4. Drag the window to position it, or dock it against an existing panel edge.

Layout is a property of the workspace. If you close SabrTrader without saving the workspace, the windows you opened will not return on restart.

Market Watch

Market Watch is a quote grid. Each row is one instrument; each column is one field (symbol, last price, net change, percentage change, bid, ask, volume, and similar fields depending on the connection). It is a scanning tool: you read it to decide where to look next, not to place trades.

Control	What it does	Notes
Add symbol	Adds one instrument to the current grid manually	Only symbols available on the connected feed can be added; futures require the correct root and contract month
Symbol list dropdown	Loads a saved list of instruments into the grid in one action	Demo lists: US Tech 10, Index ETFs, Top 5 Futures
Create / name list	Saves the current set of symbols under a name for reuse	Lists persist with your profile, independent of any single window
Row size (small / medium / large)	Sets the vertical height and text size of each grid row	Medium is the practical default; small fits more rows but truncates values
Open Chart	Launches a price chart for the instrument on the selected row	In the demo this produced a 1-minute SPY chart, then a 1-minute gold chart
Link colour (link group)	Assigns the window to a coloured link group so symbol selection propagates to other windows in the same group	Matching colours (for example red-to-red) tie a watchlist to a chart
Duplicate window	Creates a second Market Watch with the same configuration	Fastest way to build one window per asset class

Symbol lists and watchlists

A symbol list (watchlist) is a saved group of instruments monitored together. Building lists by theme or asset class is faster to read than one long undifferentiated list, because your eye scans a small block of related instruments instead of hunting a row in fifty.

• US Tech 10 — the ten largest US technology equities. Equity tickers are plain symbols (AAPL, MSFT, NVDA).
• Index ETFs — SPY (S&P 500), QQQ (Nasdaq-100), IWM (Russell 2000), plus VIX as a risk-sentiment gauge. VIX is an index, not a tradable ETF, but is monitored in the same block.
• Top 5 Futures — the futures you actually trade, for example ES, NQ, CL, GC, ZB. Futures symbols carry a root plus expiry convention that varies by connection; an expired or wrong contract month yields a blank row.

Asset-class grouping matters because instruments within a class move together. Reading SPY, QQQ and IWM side by side reveals index breadth; reading ES and NQ side by side reveals whether index futures confirm the ETF move; mixing all of them with ten equities in one grid hides both relationships.

Duplicating windows for multi-asset monitoring

Duplicate clones an existing window with its current settings. The recommended pattern demonstrated in the video is three Market Watch windows side by side:

1. Window 1 — futures list (ES, NQ and your other contracts).
2. Window 2 — index ETFs (SPY, QQQ, IWM, VIX).
3. Window 3 — tech equities (US Tech 10).

Duplicate is also available on Depth Chart and Time & Sales. Two Depth Charts let you watch ES and NQ books simultaneously; two Time & Sales windows let you run different filter settings on the same instrument, for example one unfiltered window for tape speed and one filtered at 20 lots for large prints.

Row size and screen real estate

Row size controls information density. It is a direct trade-off, not a quality setting:

Row size	Rows visible	Trade-off
Small	Most	Values and column headers can be truncated; harder to read at a glance from a distance
Medium	Balanced	Practical default for a 10-symbol list; full values remain readable
Large	Fewest	Readable across a room or on a high-resolution monitor; consumes the most vertical space

Row size is distinct from window resizing. Dragging a window border changes how many rows and columns are visible without changing text size; changing row size changes the size of each row itself. Combine both: pick a row size you can read, then size the window to show exactly the number of rows in the list.

Open Chart and link colours

Open Chart is the row action that launches a price chart for the instrument on the highlighted Market Watch row. It removes the retyping step between scanning and analysis.

Link colours (link groups) connect windows so that a symbol change in one propagates to all windows sharing the same colour. The mechanics:

1. Set the Market Watch link colour to a colour, for example red.
2. Set the chart's link colour to the same red.
3. Selecting a row in that Market Watch now changes the chart's symbol automatically.

Use different colours to keep independent groups. A common configuration: the futures Market Watch and your execution chart both on red; the ETF Market Watch and a secondary reference chart both on blue; the equities Market Watch unlinked so clicking rows there never disturbs an active chart. Assigning every window to a single colour destroys the ability to hold one chart still while browsing another list.

Depth Chart

The Depth Chart plots cumulative resting liquidity: for each price level away from the inside market it shows the total displayed limit-order size queued at that level and better. Bid-side depth is plotted on one side, ask-side depth on the other.

• Symbol selector — assigns the instrument after the window opens blank.
• Duplicate — spawn a second Depth Chart for another instrument (NQ, VIX, or whatever you track).
• Panel sizing — the shape of the plot changes with window size; a narrow panel compresses price and exaggerates step shapes.

Time & Sales

Time & Sales is the tape: a chronological list of every executed trade. Columns typically show time, price, size, and the aggressor side implied by colour.

Setting / control	Values	Function
Symbol selector	Any subscribable instrument	Chooses which instrument's prints stream into the window
Minimum trade size (lot filter)	1 upward, e.g. 1, 5, 20, 100	Suppresses prints smaller than the threshold. The filter is inclusive: "size or greater"
Aggregate per second	0 = off; otherwise a number of seconds, e.g. 5	Combines prints occurring within the chosen window into a single aggregated line
Clear	Button	Empties the displayed list so the next prints reflect current settings only
Freeze	Toggle	Pauses visual scrolling so a burst of prints can be inspected; data continues underneath
Colour convention	Green / red	Green = traded at the ask (aggressive buy); red = traded at the bid (aggressive sell)
Duplicate	Button	Second tape instance with independent filter settings

Default (unfiltered) tape

By default the minimum size filter is at its lowest setting and aggregation is 0, so every print that crosses the tape is displayed. On a fast instrument such as ES during regular trading hours this scrolls faster than any human can read individual lines. That is not a defect — it is the state some traders deliberately keep, because they are reading speed rather than sizes.

Minimum trade size filter

The minimum trade size filter answers "show me only executions of at least N contracts/shares." It converts an unreadable stream into a short list of the largest participants' prints.

Demonstrated sequence:

1. Set minimum size to 20.
2. Press Clear so the list contains no pre-filter prints.
3. Wait. On a quiet range day only a single 20-lot print may arrive in a minute.
4. Relax the threshold to 5 and press Clear again. Substantially more flow appears, because the filter now admits every print of five contracts or more.

Threshold selection is instrument-specific and session-specific:

Instrument / session	Starting threshold	Reasoning
ES, RTH	10–25 contracts	Very high print frequency; small prints are pure noise
ES, overnight (ETH)	3–10 contracts	Far fewer participants; a 20-lot filter may show almost nothing
NQ, RTH	3–10 contracts	Lower per-contract print sizes than ES; the same threshold over-filters
MES / MNQ (micros)	25–100 contracts	One tenth notional per contract, so meaningful size is roughly ten times the mini figure
Liquid large-cap equity	1,000–5,000 shares	Share sizes are orders of magnitude larger than futures lot counts
Thin equity or thin future	1–5	Any filter above a handful hides the entire session
Reading tape speed	1 (no filter)	You want every print so the scroll rate reflects true participation

The trade-off is signal versus sample size. A high threshold isolates the largest participants but may produce so few prints that you cannot tell whether they lean bid or ask. A low threshold gives a large sample but reintroduces noise. Re-tune whenever volatility changes materially.

Per-second aggregation

The aggregate per second setting groups prints that occur within a chosen number of seconds into a single displayed line with combined size. Setting it to 0 disables aggregation.

The rationale is execution mechanics. Institutions rarely send one large block order into a public order book, because a visible block moves price against them. Instead an execution algorithm slices the parent order into many small child orders sent milliseconds or seconds apart. On a raw tape these appear as a stream of unremarkable 2- and 3-lot prints. Aggregating over, for example, five seconds reassembles them into one line whose size reveals the true footprint of the participant.

Aggregation and the size filter compose. A typical configuration is minimum size 5, aggregation 5 seconds: only prints of five or more are admitted, and those admitted within any five-second window are summed. Press Clear after setting both.

Window width matters:

• 1–3 seconds — captures tightly clustered child orders; least risk of merging unrelated flow.
• 5 seconds — the demonstrated setting; a practical balance for index futures.
• 10 seconds and above — increasingly over-aggregates. Independent participants trading in the same window are merged into one line, producing apparent large size that no single trader placed.

Clear and Freeze

Clear empties the displayed tape. It is a display reset, not a data action. Its purpose is diagnostic honesty: after you change the minimum size or aggregation setting, the rows already on screen were produced under the old settings. Clearing guarantees that everything you subsequently see reflects the new configuration. Always Clear after any settings change.

Freeze pauses the scrolling of the tape so you can read a burst of prints that would otherwise vanish upward. Underlying data collection continues while frozen; unfreezing resumes the live display. Freeze is the correct tool for studying a burst — faster and more accurate than taking a screenshot, because the rows remain selectable and aligned with their columns.

Hover tooltips

Hovering the pointer over a setting field in these windows displays a tooltip describing what the field controls, including the meaning of special values such as 0 disabling aggregation. Use tooltips to confirm a field's function before changing it, particularly on windows you have duplicated and configured differently.

Trading concepts behind these windows

Tape reading and the tape

Time & Sales (the tape) is a chronological list of every executed trade showing price, size, and whether the trade hit the bid or the ask. Tape reading is the practice of interpreting the sequence, size and speed of those executions to infer short-term buying and selling pressure. It is the most granular view of order flow available, because it is the raw event stream from which every aggregated order-flow tool is built.

Aggression: hitting the bid vs hitting the ask

Every execution has an aggressor — the side that crossed the spread to demand immediacy — and a passive side whose resting limit order was filled.

• Aggressive buying (hitting the ask) — a market or crossing order executes at the offer. Printed green. The buyer accepted the ask price to get filled now.
• Aggressive selling (hitting the bid) — a market or crossing order executes at the bid. Printed red. The seller accepted the bid price to get filled now.

Green and red therefore label who was impatient, not who was right. A wall of green prints while price fails to advance is a bearish observation, not a bullish one.

Delta

Delta is the net difference between volume traded at the ask and volume traded at the bid over a bar, session or range. Positive delta means aggressive buyers dominated; negative delta means aggressive sellers dominated. The green/red colouring on Time & Sales is delta expressed one trade at a time; a footprint chart is the same information aggregated by price level and bar, and cumulative delta is its running session total.

Absorption

Absorption is aggressive market orders being fully consumed by resting limit liquidity without price making progress. On the tape it appears as repeated same-side prints at one price — a run of green at the same offer that never ticks up, or red at the same bid that never ticks down. It implies a large passive participant is soaking up the flow. Absorption is one of the strongest tape observations because it identifies the winning side before price confirms it.

Iceberg and hidden orders

Iceberg (hidden) orders are limit orders whose true size is not displayed in the order book. Only a small portion shows, and the remainder replenishes as it is filled. Consequently they are invisible on the Depth Chart and only become detectable on the tape, as repeated executions at one price far exceeding the displayed size at that price. This is a structural reason the Depth Chart cannot be the whole picture. The Liquidity Heatmap and SuperDOM are the dedicated tools for iceberg detection.

Block orders and order slicing

A block order is a single large institutional order, typically too large to execute in one print without moving price. Order slicing (algorithmic execution) is the standard response: the parent order is broken into many small child orders sent milliseconds apart, often randomised in size and interval, to conceal the total. Per-second aggregation exists specifically to counteract slicing by re-summing the children within a time window.

Lot size and trade size

Lot size (trade size) is the number of contracts or shares in a single execution. It is the primary noise filter available on the tape, because retail and market-making flow clusters at small sizes while institutional child orders and outright blocks are larger. Absolute size means nothing across instruments: 20 contracts is large in ES and trivial in MES; 20 shares is meaningless in any liquid equity.

Speed of tape

Speed of tape is how fast prints arrive. It is used as a proxy for market urgency and participation rather than as a way to read individual trades. A tape that suddenly accelerates signals that participants are competing for fills; a tape that goes quiet signals that the auction has paused. Reading speed requires an unfiltered tape (minimum size 1, aggregation 0), because filters remove exactly the prints that determine the perceived rate.

Market depth and the order book

Market depth (the order book) is the set of resting limit orders queued at each price level on the bid and offer sides. It shows intent to trade at a price, not trades. A Depth Chart is a visual, cumulative plot of that resting liquidity, showing where size is stacked away from the inside market.

Liquidity stair steps

Liquidity stair steps are step-like jumps in the depth chart where an unusually large block of resting orders sits at one price. A step forms a shelf that can act as short-term support (on the bid side) or resistance (on the ask side), because aggressive flow must consume the entire block to move through it. They are candidate levels, not confirmed ones.

Book imbalance and balanced books

Book imbalance is a meaningful difference between total resting bid size and total resting ask size, suggesting one side is more heavily defended. A balanced book has roughly symmetric resting liquidity on both sides — the normal condition in a deep, liquid instrument such as ES, which is why the demonstration showed little imbalance. Thinner instruments display far more visible imbalance, but with less reliability, because a single participant's order dominates the picture.

Spoofing and pulled depth

Spoofing / order pulling is displayed depth that is cancelled before it can be executed. Resting size can be added and removed in milliseconds at no cost to the participant unless it trades. This is the central caveat of any depth display: a large visible block is a claim, not a commitment. Depth should be treated as context that raises or lowers your expectation, then confirmed by what actually executes on the tape or footprint.

Support, resistance and range days

Support and resistance are price areas where buying or selling interest has previously halted or reversed movement — support below current price, resistance above. A range day is a session with no sustained directional move. On a range day both depth and tape signals are less decisive: aggression alternates, absorption occurs at both extremes, and stair-step shelves hold simply because nothing is pressing them. Recognising a range day early prevents over-interpreting weak signals.

Liquid vs thin markets

Instruments differ enormously in resting size and print frequency. ES prints continuously with thousands of contracts resting near the inside market; a thin future or small-cap equity may go seconds or minutes between prints with a handful of contracts showing. Every filter, aggregation window and depth expectation must be tuned per symbol. A single global configuration will over-filter thin markets and under-filter fast ones.

Chart linking and watchlists

Chart linking (link groups) assigns windows a shared colour so that changing the symbol in one window updates all linked windows. A watchlist (symbol list) is a saved group of instruments monitored together. Together they turn a scan into a single click: notice a row, and the linked chart, and any other linked windows, follow.

Instruments commonly monitored

• ES — E-mini S&P 500 futures. The most heavily traded US index futures contract and the reference instrument for order-flow work.
• NQ — E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures. Faster and more volatile per tick than ES, with smaller typical print sizes.
• SPY, QQQ, IWM — exchange-traded funds tracking the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100 and Russell 2000. Watched alongside their futures equivalents to compare cash and futures behaviour.
• VIX — the CBOE Volatility Index, a risk-sentiment gauge derived from S&P 500 option prices. Not directly tradable, but monitored beside index products because rising VIX usually accompanies equity weakness.

Tutorial: build a three-window monitoring layout

This procedure builds the layout demonstrated in the video: three Market Watch windows grouped by asset class, one linked chart, a Depth Chart on ES, and a filtered Time & Sales on ES.

1. Confirm the data connection. In the Control Center, verify the connection status shows connected and that your entitlements include Level 1 for the instruments you will watch and Level 2 if you want a populated Depth Chart.
2. Open the first Market Watch. New menu → Market Watch. The window opens blank.
3. Load a futures list. Open the symbol list dropdown and select your futures list (for example Top 5 Futures). If no list exists, add symbols manually — ES and NQ with the correct contract month for your connection — then save the set as a named list.
4. Duplicate for index ETFs. With the futures window focused, choose Duplicate. In the copy, load the Index ETFs list containing SPY, QQQ, IWM and VIX.
5. Duplicate again for equities. Duplicate once more and load US Tech 10.
6. Set row size and dock. Set each window's row size to medium. Dock the three side by side, then drag each border so the visible rows exactly match the number of symbols in its list — no empty space, no scrolling.
7. Open a chart from a row. Select a row (for example SPY) and use Open Chart. A chart opens for that instrument; set the interval you want (the demo used 1 minute).
8. Set link colours. Set the Market Watch you want to drive the chart to link colour red, and set the chart to the same red. Click different rows to verify the chart symbol follows. Leave the other two Market Watch windows on a different colour or unlinked so they cannot disturb this chart.
9. Open the Depth Chart. New menu → Depth Chart. Select ES in the symbol selector. Confirm both bid and ask sides populate. Size the panel so the cumulative curve and any step shelves are visible without scrolling.
10. Open Time & Sales. New menu → Time & Sales. Select ES. Observe the unfiltered default for a few seconds to gauge the raw print rate.
11. Apply filters. Set minimum trade size to 5. Set aggregate per second to 5. Press Clear. Only prints of five contracts or more now appear, summed within each five-second window.
12. Validate the filter. If nothing arrives for a minute, lower the minimum size and Clear again. If lines scroll too fast to read, raise it and Clear again. Repeat until you see roughly a readable number of lines per minute.
13. Pair with an execution surface. Open a footprint chart or SuperDOM on the same symbol as the Depth Chart and tape, so all order-flow surfaces describe one instrument.
14. Save the workspace. Save the workspace under a descriptive name (for example Index Monitoring — RTH). Restart SabrTrader and reopen it to confirm every window, symbol, filter and link colour was preserved.

Optional: a second tape for speed reading

1. Duplicate the Time & Sales window.
2. In the duplicate, set minimum size to 1 and aggregation to 0, then Clear.
3. Place it beside the filtered tape. The filtered window shows who is large; the unfiltered window shows how urgent the market is.

Best practices

• Keep watchlists small and themed. Five to twelve related instruments per list. Grouping by asset class lets you read relative strength within the group instantly.
• Use one link colour per intent. Reserve one colour for the watchlist that drives your execution chart. Leave reference charts on other colours or unlinked so a stray click cannot change the chart you are trading from.
• Tune the minimum size filter per instrument. A threshold that works on ES over-filters NQ and destroys any micro-contract or thin-equity tape. Write down your per-instrument thresholds so you can restore them.
• Re-tune when volatility changes. A filter set on a quiet range day will flood you on a high-volume trend day, and a filter set during the RTH open will show nothing overnight.
• Always press Clear after changing a filter or aggregation setting. Otherwise pre-change rows remain visible and you will misjudge whether the new setting works.
• Use Freeze rather than screenshots to study a burst of prints. Rows stay aligned and readable, and the feed continues underneath.
• Keep the Depth Chart, Time & Sales and your footprint chart on the same symbol. Mixed symbols across order-flow windows is one of the easiest ways to reach a wrong conclusion.
• Treat depth as context, never as a standalone signal. Confirm what depth suggests with what actually executes — absorption on the tape or imbalance on the footprint.
• Match aggregation width to the instrument. Start at 5 seconds on index futures; shorten it if unrelated flow is clearly being merged; lengthen it only if you know the algo you are hunting works slowly.
• Give the execution chart the most screen space. Monitoring windows exist to direct attention; the chart or ladder you trade from should never be the smallest panel.
• Save one workspace per session type. Separate layouts for the RTH open, the midday range, and the overnight session let you carry the correct filters and instruments into each without reconfiguring.
• Verify futures contract months at rollover. When volume migrates to the next contract month, update every list, Depth Chart and tape window, or you will be monitoring an illiquid expiring contract.
• Use hover tooltips before changing an unfamiliar field rather than experimenting mid-session.

Common mistakes

Mistake	Why it fails	Correction
Reading raw unfiltered tape on a fast instrument	During the RTH open ES prints faster than any human can parse line by line, so you extract nothing from individual rows	Either apply a minimum size filter to isolate large prints, or accept the unfiltered view and read speed only
Using one size threshold across all symbols	Meaningful size is instrument-relative; 20 contracts is large in ES, trivial in MES, and unrelated to any share count	Set and record a per-instrument threshold; re-check it whenever you switch symbols
Setting the aggregation window too wide	A 30-second window merges independent participants into one apparent large trade, manufacturing signals that never existed	Start at 5 seconds and widen only with a specific reason
Forgetting to press Clear after a settings change	Pre-change rows remain on screen, so the filter appears broken or appears to be working when it is not	Make Clear a reflex immediately after every filter or aggregation edit
Trusting stair-step depth as guaranteed support	Displayed orders can be cancelled instantly, and iceberg size is never displayed at all	Treat shelves as candidate levels; require tape or footprint confirmation before acting
Linking every window to one colour	Every click anywhere changes every chart, so you lose the higher-timeframe or execution context you were holding	Use at least two colours plus one unlinked window for browsing
Over-allocating screen space to watchlists	Three large Market Watch grids can crowd the chart or ladder you actually trade from	Shrink monitoring windows to exactly the rows needed; give the execution surface priority
Assuming green or red prints alone confirm direction	Colour identifies the aggressor, not the winner. Persistent green with no upward progress is absorption by sellers	Always evaluate aggression against whether price is actually advancing
Leaving Freeze enabled after inspecting a burst	The window looks live but is a static snapshot, and you act on stale prints	Toggle Freeze off immediately after inspection; treat a motionless tape on an active market as suspicious
Expecting the Depth Chart to work on a trades-only feed	Depth requires Level 2 market-depth data; a Level 1 feed has nothing to plot	Confirm depth entitlement on the connection, or use footprint and tape tools instead
Interpreting weak signals on a range day as directional	In balance, aggression alternates and both extremes show absorption, so single observations have little predictive value	Classify the day first; require stronger, repeated evidence in balance
Never saving the workspace	All three windows, their filters and link colours are lost on restart and must be rebuilt from scratch	Save the workspace after any layout change worth keeping

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between the Depth Chart and Time & Sales in SabrTrader?

They show opposite sides of the same market. The Depth Chart displays resting limit orders that have not traded — cumulative queued bid and ask size at prices away from the inside market. It reflects intent. Time & Sales displays trades that have already executed — price, size and aggressor side for each print. It reflects action. Depth can be cancelled at any moment; executions cannot be undone. In practice depth suggests where price may pause, and the tape confirms whether that liquidity is actually being consumed or defended.

Why is my Market Watch, Depth Chart, or Time & Sales window blank when it opens?

This is the intended behaviour. All three windows open with no instrument assigned. For Market Watch, add symbols manually or load a saved symbol list from the list dropdown. For Depth Chart and Time & Sales, choose an instrument in the window's symbol selector. If a window is still blank after a symbol is assigned, the symbol may not be available on your connection, the contract month may be wrong for a futures symbol, or (for the Depth Chart) your feed may not supply Level 2 market depth.

How do I create and save a custom symbol list in Market Watch?

Add the instruments you want using the add-symbol control in a Market Watch window, then create and name a new list from the list dropdown so the set is saved for reuse. Saved lists persist with your profile and can be loaded into any Market Watch window, including duplicated ones. Keep each list to a single theme or asset class — for example one list for index futures, one for index ETFs, one for tech equities — because small themed lists are far faster to scan than one long combined list.

How do link colours connect Market Watch to a chart?

A link colour assigns a window to a link group. Windows sharing the same colour share symbol selection: click a row in a red-linked Market Watch and every red-linked chart switches to that instrument. To set it up, set the Market Watch link colour to red and the chart link colour to red. Use a different colour, or no link, for charts you want to stay fixed. This eliminates retyping symbols when moving from a scan to a chart.

What does the minimum trade size filter in Time & Sales actually do?

It hides every print smaller than the value you set. The filter is inclusive — a setting of 5 means "five contracts or greater." Its purpose is noise reduction: small prints from retail flow and market-making dominate the raw tape by count, while larger prints are more likely to represent institutional child orders or outright blocks. Raising the threshold increases signal quality but shrinks your sample; lowering it does the opposite. Press Clear after changing the value so the displayed rows all reflect the new filter.

What minimum lot size should I use for ES, NQ, or equities?

There is no universal number, only instrument-relative starting points. On ES during regular trading hours, 10–25 contracts isolates larger participants; overnight, drop to 3–10 because participation is far thinner. On NQ, 3–10 is usually appropriate since typical print sizes are smaller than ES. On micro contracts such as MES and MNQ, multiply the mini figure by roughly ten (25–100). On liquid large-cap equities, thresholds are in shares, commonly 1,000–5,000. Adjust until you get a readable number of prints per minute, and re-tune when volatility changes.

What does the per-second aggregation setting do and when should I use it?

It merges prints occurring within the chosen number of seconds into a single line with combined size. Setting it to 0 disables aggregation. Use it when you want to detect sliced institutional orders: execution algorithms split a large parent order into many small child orders sent milliseconds apart, which look like unremarkable small prints individually. Aggregating over, say, five seconds reassembles them into one line whose size reveals the underlying participant. Do not set it too wide — at 10 seconds and above, unrelated traders' prints get merged and the displayed size stops corresponding to any real order.

Why does green mean buying and red mean selling on the tape?

Colour identifies the aggressor — the party that crossed the spread for immediate execution. A green print traded at the ask, meaning a buyer paid the offer rather than waiting in the bid queue. A red print traded at the bid, meaning a seller accepted the bid rather than waiting at the offer. The convention encodes urgency, not correctness. A stream of green prints while price does not advance means aggressive buyers are being absorbed by a larger passive seller — a bearish observation, not a bullish one.

Do I have to press Clear after changing a Time & Sales setting?

Yes, as a matter of discipline. Clear only affects the display, not the data stream, but the rows already on screen were produced under the previous filter and aggregation settings. Leaving them visible makes a new filter appear broken (old small prints still showing) or appear to be working when it is not. Pressing Clear guarantees that every subsequent row reflects the current configuration exactly.

What does Freeze do, and does data keep updating while frozen?

Freeze pauses the visual scrolling of the tape so you can read a burst of prints that would otherwise be pushed off screen. Data collection continues underneath while frozen; unfreezing resumes the live display. Freeze is preferable to a screenshot for studying a burst because rows remain aligned with their columns and remain part of the live window. Remember to unfreeze — a motionless tape on an active market usually means Freeze is still on.

Are the stair steps on the Depth Chart reliable support and resistance?

No — they are candidate levels, not confirmed ones. A stair step is a large block of resting limit orders at one price, and consuming it takes real aggression, which is why price often pauses there. But displayed orders can be cancelled instantly at no cost (order pulling or spoofing), and iceberg orders hide their true size so genuine defence may exist where the depth chart shows nothing. Use stair steps as places to watch, then require confirmation from what actually executes on Time & Sales or the footprint chart before treating a level as real.

Do I need Level 2 market depth data for the Depth Chart?

Yes. The Depth Chart plots resting limit orders queued at each price level, which is Level 2 (market depth) data. Level 1 provides only best bid, best ask and last trade, which contains no depth to plot. If your connection or entitlement is trades-and-quotes only, the Depth Chart will be empty or show a single level on each side. Check your connection's data entitlements; Market Watch and Time & Sales continue to work on Level 1 alone.

Can I open multiple Time & Sales or Depth Chart windows at once?

Yes. Every one of these windows supports Duplicate, which clones the window with its current settings so you only need to change the symbol or filters. Common uses: two Depth Charts for ES and NQ side by side; two Time & Sales windows on the same instrument, one unfiltered for reading tape speed and one filtered at a high minimum size for large prints. Running several instances is the intended workflow rather than switching symbols in a single window.

Is Time & Sales still useful if I already use footprint charts?

Yes, because they present the same underlying trades at different resolutions. A footprint chart aggregates executions by price level within each bar, which is superior for structure, imbalance and delta over time. Time & Sales preserves the raw chronological sequence, individual print sizes and the exact arrival rate — information the footprint necessarily discards. Sequence and speed matter for detecting iceberg refills, order slicing and sudden bursts of urgency. Most order-flow traders run both.

How do I read tape speed instead of individual trade sizes?

Set the minimum trade size to 1 and aggregation to 0, then Clear. Every print now appears, and the scroll rate becomes a direct measure of participation and urgency. You are not reading the numbers; you are reading acceleration and pauses. A tape that abruptly speeds up indicates participants competing for fills; a tape that goes quiet indicates the auction has paused. To combine both perspectives, duplicate the window and run one unfiltered instance for speed alongside one filtered instance for large prints.

Why does the ES Depth Chart look symmetric while a thinner market looks lopsided?

ES is one of the deepest futures markets in the world, with thousands of contracts resting near the inside market from many independent participants. Their combined liquidity averages out into a roughly balanced book. In a thinner instrument, far fewer orders are resting, so a single participant's block dominates one side and creates a visible book imbalance. Visible imbalance in thin markets is therefore less reliable, not more — it can be created or removed by one trader.

Does row size in Market Watch change the data shown?

No. Row size (small, medium, large) changes only the height and text size of each row. All the same fields are present at every setting, but at small size long values and column headers may be truncated so you cannot read them fully. Medium is the practical default for a ten-symbol list. Row size is independent of window resizing: dragging the window border changes how many rows and columns are visible without changing text size.

Why do I see almost no prints even though the market is open?

Most commonly the minimum trade size filter is too high for the instrument or session — a 20-contract filter on ES during a quiet range day may produce a single print per minute, exactly as shown in the demonstration. Lower the threshold and press Clear. Other causes: Freeze is still enabled; the aggregation window is set very wide so lines only appear at the end of each window; the symbol genuinely has little activity; or the symbol has no Level 1 subscription on your connection.

Can I use these windows with delayed market data?

Yes, they will populate, but every value is lagged by the feed's delay — commonly 15 minutes. That makes all three windows unusable for execution decisions: the tape shows aggression that finished a quarter of an hour ago and the depth chart shows a book that no longer exists. Delayed data is fine for learning the controls, building watchlists and designing a layout. Live tape reading and depth reading require a real-time subscription.

Should I use Market Watch for order entry?

No. Market Watch is a scanning grid, not an execution surface. Its role is to tell you which instrument deserves attention, then to hand that instrument to a chart via Open Chart or a link colour. Place and manage orders from a chart's Chart Trader panel or from the SuperDOM ladder, where you can see resting liquidity at the price you are clicking.

Troubleshooting

The window opens completely blank with no rows or plot

Expected behaviour — none of these windows assumes a symbol. For Market Watch, add symbols manually or select a saved list from the list dropdown. For Depth Chart and Time & Sales, choose an instrument in the window's symbol selector. If it stays blank after selecting a symbol, verify the connection is active in the Control Center and that the symbol is subscribable on that connection.

No prints appear on Time & Sales

1. Check the minimum trade size filter. A threshold that is too high for the instrument or session (for example 20 contracts on ES on a quiet range day) can produce almost nothing. Lower it and press Clear.
2. Check that Freeze is not still enabled from an earlier inspection.
3. Check the aggregation setting. A wide window means lines only appear at the end of each interval; set it to 0 to confirm raw prints are arriving.
4. Verify the symbol has Level 1 trade data on your connection — some feeds provide quotes without a full trade stream for certain instruments.
5. Confirm the market is actually open for that instrument.

The Depth Chart is empty, or shows only one level on each side

The Depth Chart requires Level 2 (market depth) data. Level 1 supplies only best bid, best ask and last trade, which contains no depth to plot. Verify that your connection type provides depth and that your account holds the market-depth entitlement for that exchange. Depth quality and the number of levels also depend on the provider — some feeds publish only a limited number of levels. Market Watch and Time & Sales continue working normally on Level 1.

Symbols are missing from a saved list, or a row shows no data

1. The instrument may not be available on the currently connected feed. Symbol availability is per connection, so a list built on one connection may be partially blank on another.
2. For futures, the contract month may be wrong or expired. After rollover, update the list to the new front month.
3. The symbol syntax may not match the provider's convention — ticker format differs by asset class and vendor. Use the connection's symbol lookup to resolve the correct tradable symbol.
4. You may have exceeded the number of simultaneous streaming subscriptions your account is entitled to, causing later rows to be dropped. Reduce the number of open symbols across all windows.

The chart does not follow the Market Watch selection

1. Confirm both windows are set to the same link colour. Red on the watchlist and blue on the chart will not link.
2. Confirm the chart is not unlinked (no colour assigned).
3. Confirm you are clicking rows in the linked Market Watch instance, not in one of its duplicates — duplicated windows can carry different link colours.
4. Confirm the target symbol is available on the chart's data connection; the chart cannot switch to a symbol it cannot subscribe to.

The tape appears frozen unexpectedly

Check whether the Freeze toggle is still enabled — this is the most common cause. Data continues to be collected while frozen, so unfreezing resumes the live display immediately. If Freeze is off and the tape is still motionless, verify the connection status, confirm the market session is open, and check whether the minimum size filter or aggregation setting is suppressing all prints.

The layout is lost after restarting SabrTrader

Window positions, symbols, link colours, row sizes and Time & Sales filters are stored in the workspace. If the workspace was not saved before closing, none of it persists. Save the workspace after any layout change worth keeping, and maintain separate saved workspaces for different session types (RTH open, midday, overnight) so each carries its own filter settings.

Market Watch rows are truncated or values are cut off

1. Increase the row size from small to medium or large — small rows compress text and can clip values.
2. Widen the individual column by dragging its header divider.
3. Widen or heighten the window itself. Row size controls text and row height; window size controls how many rows and columns are visible.
4. If space is limited, remove unused columns or shorten the list rather than shrinking rows below readability.

Aggregated tape lines show implausibly large sizes

The aggregation window is probably too wide. At 10 seconds and above, prints from unrelated participants are merged into a single line, so the displayed size does not correspond to any real order. Reduce the aggregation window to 1–5 seconds and press Clear. Also verify the minimum size filter — combining a low threshold with a wide window maximises unintended merging.

Time & Sales and the footprint chart appear to disagree

1. Confirm both windows are on the same symbol and contract month. This is the most frequent cause.
2. Check whether the tape has a minimum size filter or aggregation active. A filtered tape shows a subset of trades, so its apparent bid/ask balance will not match unfiltered footprint totals.
3. Remember the footprint aggregates by price level within a bar while the tape is chronological, so identical data can look different. Press Clear on the tape and set minimum size to 1, aggregation to 0, to compare like with like.

Glossary

Absorption

Aggressive market orders being fully consumed by resting limit liquidity without price making progress, implying a large passive participant is soaking up the flow.

Aggressive buying (hitting the ask)

A market or crossing order that executes at the offer price, printed in green on the tape, indicating a buyer willing to pay up for immediate execution.

Aggressive selling (hitting the bid)

A market or crossing order that executes at the bid price, printed in red on the tape, indicating a seller willing to accept a lower price for immediacy.

Asset class grouping

Separating equities, index ETFs and futures into distinct Market Watch windows so related instruments can be scanned side by side and relative strength read within each group.

Balanced book

Roughly symmetric resting liquidity on both the bid and ask sides, typical of deep and liquid instruments such as ES.

Block order

A single large institutional order, typically too large to execute in one print without moving the market against the participant.

Book imbalance

A meaningful difference between total resting bid size and total resting ask size, suggesting one side of the book is more heavily defended.

Chart linking (link groups)

Assigning windows the same colour group so that changing the symbol in one linked window updates every other window in that group.

Clear

A Time & Sales button that empties the displayed list so that subsequent rows reflect only the current filter and aggregation settings. It affects the display, not the data stream.

Delta

The net difference between volume traded at the ask and volume traded at the bid over a bar, session or range. Positive delta indicates aggressive buyers dominated; negative delta indicates aggressive sellers dominated.

Depth chart

A visual, cumulative plot of resting bid and ask liquidity showing where displayed size is stacked at prices away from the inside market.

Duplicate window

A control that creates a second instance of a Market Watch, Depth Chart or Time & Sales window carrying the same settings, which is then pointed at a different symbol or list.

ES / NQ futures

The E-mini S&P 500 (ES) and E-mini Nasdaq-100 (NQ) futures contracts traded on CME, the most commonly used index futures for order-flow analysis.

Footprint chart

A chart type that displays traded volume split by buy and sell aggressor at each individual price level within each bar, used to read absorption, imbalance and delta. It is the price-organised, aggregated form of the same trades shown on Time & Sales.

Freeze

A Time & Sales toggle that pauses visual scrolling so a burst of prints can be inspected. Data collection continues while frozen and unfreezing resumes the live display.

Iceberg / hidden orders

Limit orders whose true size is not displayed in the order book; only a small portion shows and the remainder replenishes as it is filled, so the real size becomes visible only through repeated executions on the tape.

Index ETFs (SPY, QQQ, IWM)

Exchange-traded funds tracking the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100 and Russell 2000 respectively, frequently watched alongside their futures equivalents.

Level 1 data

Market data showing best bid, best ask and last trade price and size. Sufficient for Market Watch quotes and for Time & Sales prints.

Level 2 data

Market data showing the resting depth-of-market ladder — queued bid and ask size at multiple price levels — required for the Depth Chart, SuperDOM and liquidity heatmap tools.

Liquid vs thin markets

The difference in resting size and print frequency between instruments, which requires filter thresholds and aggregation windows to be tuned per symbol rather than applied globally.

Liquidity stair steps

Step-like jumps in a depth chart where an unusually large block of resting orders sits at one price, forming a shelf that can act as short-term support or resistance.

Lot size / trade size

The number of contracts or shares in a single execution, used as the primary filter for separating institutional-scale activity from small-order noise.

Market depth / order book

The set of resting limit orders queued at each price level on the bid and offer sides, representing intent to trade rather than completed trades.

Minimum trade size filter

A Time & Sales setting that hides every print smaller than a specified size. The filter is inclusive, so a value of 5 displays prints of five contracts or greater.

New menu (window launcher)

The SabrTrader menu that creates new windows — charts, SuperDOM, Market Watch, Depth Chart, Time & Sales and analysis panels — docking each into the active workspace.

Open Chart

A Market Watch row action that launches a price chart for the instrument on the selected row, removing the need to retype the symbol.

Order slicing / algorithmic execution

Breaking a large parent order into many small child orders sent milliseconds or seconds apart to conceal total size from other participants.

Range day

A session with no sustained directional move, in which depth and tape signals tend to be less decisive because aggression alternates and absorption occurs at both extremes.

Row size

A Market Watch setting (small, medium or large) that controls row height and text size, trading information density against readability. It does not change which fields are available.

Speed of tape

How fast prints arrive on Time & Sales, used as a proxy for market urgency and participation rather than as a way to read individual trades.

Spoofing / order pulling

Displayed depth that is cancelled before it can execute, which is why resting size alone should never be treated as a reliable signal.

Support and resistance

Price areas where previous trade has repeatedly halted or reversed movement — support below current price, resistance above.

Tape reading

The practice of interpreting the sequence, size and speed of executed trades to infer short-term buying and selling pressure.

Time & Sales (the tape)

A chronological list of every executed trade in an instrument, showing time, price, size, and whether the trade executed at the bid or the ask.

Trade aggregation window

A Time & Sales setting that combines prints occurring within a chosen number of seconds into a single displayed line, so sliced institutional activity appears as one larger trade. A value of 0 disables aggregation.

VIX

The CBOE Volatility Index, derived from S&P 500 option prices and monitored alongside index products as a risk-sentiment gauge. It is an index rather than a directly tradable instrument.

Watchlist / symbol list

A saved group of instruments monitored together in a Market Watch window, typically organised by asset class or theme.

Workspace

A saved SabrTrader layout containing charts, DOMs and monitoring windows bound to specific connections, including their symbols, filters, row sizes and link colours.

Related Documentation