Articles on order flow and trading bots

How to read the trade tape, tell a bot from a human and find algo traders on exchanges.

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• Market maker or accumulation: telling one bot from anotherNot every bot in the tape is buying something. A market maker quotes both sides and earns the spread; accumulation hits one side and needs size. Four tells that separate them, and why mixing them up is expensive.2026-09-18
• How to spot a trading bot in the order flowA human trades in ragged bursts; a bot slices the same size and sends it on a steady beat. Here is how that looks in the raw trade tape, and why candles never show it.2026-09-18
• Why volume is counted in dollars, not in coinsA million PEPE and a million BTC live in different universes, yet the volume column shows one number. Why cross-coin activity only makes sense in money, and the mistakes made by anyone reading quantity instead.2026-09-18
• Iceberg orders: how to see size that is not in the bookA 5k bid sits in the book, gets eaten, and comes right back at 5k. That is an iceberg: a large order shown one slice at a time. How it looks in the book, why the trade tape gives it away, and what to do about it.2026-09-18
• TWAP: how an algorithm slices a large order, and why you can see itTWAP buys in equal pieces at even intervals so it does not move price. That evenness is exactly what gives it away in the trade tape. Slice size, beat, and what it means when the algorithm goes quiet.2026-09-18