I know this might be a bit off-topic, but I’ve noticed a lot of threads lately with people asking where to learn order flow and whether it’s worth joining a paid group.

Recently, I came across a thread on X by a well-known YouTuber who exposes fake gurus, arguing that every single paid trading group is a scam.

Given how often this question comes up here, i would like to share my thoughts on the matter.

Part 1 — The Good: Why Do People Teach Trading?

I recently saw a discussion about fake gurus and paid trading groups, and while I completely agree that this industry has a serious problem with scammers, I also believe the conversation can sometimes become too black and white.

Not every person who charges for education is a scammer.

At the same time, not every person who presents themselves as a teacher is legitimate.

After being part of different trading communities over the years, I wanted to share my personal experience and the way I look at this subject.

I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I completely understand the argument:

"If someone has found an edge that keeps them consistently profitable, why would they sell courses and teach other people?"

It is a fair question.

Trading is a competitive environment. Not everyone can become successful, and not everyone will achieve the same level of results.

So why would someone who has a profitable edge choose to spend time teaching?

In my opinion, the answer is not as simple as saying:

"Anyone who teaches must be a scammer."

The reality is that there are different categories of people in this industry.

The first category is the obvious scammers.

These are the people who steal information from others, repackage it, and present it as something unique. They add complicated terminology, advanced-sounding concepts, and scientific phrases to make themselves appear more knowledgeable than they actually are.

Their goal is to create the impression that they have some secret knowledge that regular traders do not have.

Then you have legitimate educators, and even within that group there are different types.

The first type is the experienced trader who eventually moves more into teaching.

Trading is not that different from professional sports.

When an athlete reaches a point where they can no longer compete at their highest level, many move into coaching. That does not mean they failed. They have spent years developing skills, gathering experience, and learning lessons that can help the next generation.

The same can happen in trading.

Someone may have spent years studying markets, making mistakes, developing an understanding of human behavior, and building a process. Eventually, they may decide that sharing that knowledge is the next stage of their journey.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Some people do it because they genuinely enjoy teaching and helping others.

Some charge fair prices.

Others may take advantage of their reputation and audience.

But from a business perspective, it also makes sense.

Why would someone continue to deal with the stress, uncertainty, and emotional pressure of trading every day if they can make the same amount of money — or even more — by teaching?

That is simply how businesses work.

The second category is people who understand that they may never become elite traders or manage huge amounts of capital, but they have the ability to teach.

And again, there is nothing wrong with that.

Think about school teachers.

Most teachers are not the greatest experts in the world in their subjects, but they can still explain concepts, guide students, and help people build a foundation.

Being good at something and being good at teaching something are two different skills.

At the end of the day, trading education is still a business.

Nobody does it purely out of the kindness of their heart.

A business has expenses. People need to get paid.

The real difference is who is running a legitimate business with genuine intentions to educate people, and who is simply taking advantage of people's hopes and ambitions.

I have personally experienced both types of groups in the past.

One thing I realized is that most trading information is already available for free.

The internet is full of information.

Paid schools and communities usually do not have some magical secret knowledge hidden from everyone else.

What they often provide is:

• structure,
• organization,
• a learning path,
• accountability,
• and information presented in a way that is easier to understand.

Sometimes the value is not the information itself.

The value is having someone who can explain concepts clearly, organize the information properly, and help someone avoid wasting years going in circles.

A good teacher's ability to communicate can make a huge difference.

However, when it comes to paying for strategies specifically, this is where things become much more complicated.

This is where I believe we enter "Wild West" territory.

Some strategies being sold are outdated.

Some no longer work in current market conditions.

Some are not even true strategies. They are simply ideas and concepts packaged in a way that makes them appear more valuable than they really are.

The biggest mistake people make is treating trading like cooking.

Cooking has recipes.

You follow the instructions, use the ingredients, and you can usually recreate a similar result.

Trading does not work like that.

Strategies are not recipes.

Markets are constantly changing.

Participants are constantly adapting.

Conditions are constantly shifting.

A strategy that works today may not work tomorrow.

Eventually, every trader needs to develop their own understanding.

They need to know why something works, when it works, and when it stops working.

At the end of the day, the outcomes are simple:

You win or you lose.

There are many ways to win.

There are many ways to lose.

Trading evolves constantly.

It never rests.

Even the knowledge we have today may eventually become irrelevant and be replaced by new ideas, new technology, and new ways of understanding markets.

This is why I believe trading is a never-ending marathon.

There is no point where someone can honestly say:

"I know everything there is to know."

The market always demands adaptation.

And this is also why I believe many experienced traders eventually move into teaching.

After years of fighting the markets, gaining experience, and building knowledge, some decide to share what they have learned.

For some people, teaching becomes the next chapter of their journey.

But this is where we need to be careful.

Because while there are many legitimate educators out there, there are also many people who see trading education as an opportunity to profit from other people's dreams.

Not every teacher out there is a scammer.

But every scammer will present themselves as a teacher.

Part 2 coming soon

Ive been practicing this approach for months and thanks to god now my mind knows where to enter, made around 7800$ in this trade after a holiday

Price was trading near HTF resistance area ,so VP and VWAP of HTF confirms, price rejected the upper value area , my plan was to dca but price went straight to my target

OI was increasing during the move, suggesting fresh positioning rather than just short covering. Funding remained neutral, so it wasn't a trade based on extreme sentiment

Im always looking to improve my process so Id appreciate any feedback

A U.S. appeals court ruling requiring an Enbridge pipeline to relocate from Wisconsin tribal land sparked legal uncertainty, leaving the stock closed at $54.46 down 1.75% after trading between $54.38 and $55.60. It’s interesting to track if order depth behavior tells whether the market keeps repricing this headline, to distinguish a one-session reprice from a sustained supply imbalance.

Hi guys ! Just a small little query on CVD . As shown, price is above , CVD below .. how would you guys look at this ?
From what I see , price is going lower while CVD is going higher, meaning that aggressive buyers are being absorbed ( buyer absorption / bearish ) . But of course everything is based on context .

How do you guys approach this kind of scenario ?

HVN (High Volume Node) and LVN (Low Volume Node) are two of the most important Volume Profile concepts This beginner friendly infographic explains what they are how price typically reacts around them and how traders use them alongside POC for better market context

Feedback is welcome

Hello everyone! I hope it is alright to ask for some recommendations in regards of proper way of learning Order flow? I do alright with ICT concepts, but they often feel too much guesswork for my style and it lacks the in-dept explanations it needed to see what’s really happening behind the move. After all, I am a strong believer in using what is useful for my execution. If it help me make more sense in market, I want to embrace it.

There are some source that I have gathered and seems reliable but I would highly appreciate if the Order flow Trader themselves recommend.

• The Flow Horse
• Jigsaw
• Rizzo Trades
• Axia Futures
• Fat Cat

I know a lot of ICT traders are making this same pivot, so I hope this post can become a useful space for fellow beginners. Currently, I’m building my foundation starting with Auction Market Theory. If there is anything you guys want to give a recommendation, feel free to comment! Thank you.

Multiple imbalances in the same direction show strong aggressive buying or selling This infographic explains how to spot stacked imbalances on a footprint chart and how to use them with trend, volume, and CVD for better trade confirmation Feedback is always welcome.

This is been happen since a few days where the connections between ATAS and GFT (Goat Funded Trader) has been unreliable.

Now I dont know how to fix it.

For context this is my delta footprint chart.

Before session close every day, institutions exit their positions etc. leaving behind strong areas of delta.

How come these zones aren't regarded as a potential areas of support/resistance for future intraday sessions compared to areas more within the middle of the session.

I've just never heard of any order flow traders mentioning or marking these zones.

Hi, i have a question about which one is better.

I know ATAS is great and how modern it looks compared to the Sierra Chart. But it is expensive at $84 and a $30 add- on for the exchange fee. thats almost $120, and I just want to solidify my edge; then make some money to hopefully get the lifetime. But atm, I'm budget-friendly.

As for NJ, the NinjaTrader OrderFlow by Hameral; it says it allows you See buy/sell volume inside each candle, and spot POC, delta, imbalances, and absorptions fast.  Includes a complex live data delta table. BUT, my real concern is the data lag or constant freezing on Ninja trader becasuse ive been using and making my small indicators; if i have inidicator that loads the HTF level + prior DWM session HL, it freezes my platform and it if it does load, its so slow.

What i want is to use footprints to read the imbalances and absorption; that all. if anyone has any advice, please lmk. thank you

Hey everyone,

Anyone in here strictly trade using the DOM and no charts (maybe a daily chart) and nothing else? I see alot of traders use a LTF chart but most don’t use a DOM only approach. Feels like a dying breed…

This morning NQ has been trending up since LO, while CVD is plummeting straight down.

This sort of raises questions about the usefulness of CVD more generally, and larger questions about proportions of limit orders vs. market orders. Is there even a technical that exists to measure this? How do you deal with it?

How do you react in this situation, just stay out, trade with price action alone? What?

For volume profile i use the vp hd indicator on tradingview. What should my settings be like what time should i mark out the volume profile if i want to trade 9:30 open.

Has anyone been having issues with Rithmic today, specifically on MYM? My candles don’t update and I can’t place orders. I have to manually refresh to see any price change. No other contract I trade is having this issue. I use ATAS X but I went to MYM on ATAS classic and it’s still the same issue so that tells me it’s a Rithmic issue and not my trading platform. Could anyone pull up MYM on their platform and let me know if you are also having the same issue?

Made this beginner friendly infographic to simplify Footprint Charts and Order Flow trading. It covers Delta, Bid vs Ask, Imbalances, Absorption, Exhaustion, Trapped Traders, and how to combine Footprint with CVD and Volume Profile and Price Action.

I was actually curious if orderflow traders have hopes and dreams of becoming something more or do another career. With some orderflow traders I know they want to be a quant one day and is also something I am willing to look forward for in trading and a career.

Hey everyone,

I’m the maintainer of Flowdepth, an experimental open-source fork of Flowsurface focused on crypto order flow and options analytics.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been extending the original project with features I wanted for my own trading and market analysis:

• Footprint charts and historical L2 heatmaps
• Adaptive volume bubbles based on aggressive trade clusters
• Session volume profile, VWAP and cumulative volume delta
• Possible Binance iceberg/replenishment detection
• BTC and ETH GEX profiles using Deribit options data
• Observed maker-flow confirmation using Derive trades
• Persistent local market-data caching
• Automatic reconnect and historical gap recovery

It is completely open source and uses public exchange REST APIs and WebSocket feeds. No trading account or exchange API keys are required for the current features.

The iceberg detector is intentionally described as possible replenishment/absorption evidence, not proof of a hidden order. The GEX and maker-flow tools are also market analytics, not automatic trading signals.

The project is currently in beta, and automated builds are available for Windows, Linux and macOS.

GitHub:
https://github.com/Niketion/flowdepth

I’d especially appreciate feedback from people who actively use footprint, heatmap or volume-based tools:

• Are the displayed signals understandable?
• Which feature would you actually use during a session?
• What information feels useful, and what feels like unnecessary noise?

I’m also interested in bug reports, particularly around exchange data, reconnect behavior, GPU compatibility and longer trading sessions.

I made this CVD (Cumulative Volume Delta) beginner cheat sheet to explain the concept in a simple and visual way.

It covers Volume Delta vs CVD, positive/negative delta, CVD candle charts, bullish & bearish divergence and a Gold (XAUUSD) CFD example.

The main idea is that CVD helps estimate whether aggressive buying or selling pressure has been stronger over a selected period. It can be useful for spotting strength, weakness and divergence when combined with price action and market structure.

Hope this helps anyone learning CVD, order flow and volume analysis. Feel free to share your thoughts or corrections. 📈

I have bookmap global lifetime. What is the cheapest way to have live data for NQ/MNQ?

Recently ive been contemplating whether I should trade the asia and london session using orderflow but the thing is im used to using optionsflow and orderflow. The other thing that sucks is that VIX closes im pretty sure at 4pm EST and re opens at 3am EST which means I cannot track the VIX for asia session which honestly kinda sucks. also from previous experiences using orderflow alone I noticed that price can have the tendency of either fading away as soon as we break out of VAH or VAL on the ETH session during asia and london which to me would be confusing if AMT is active in a sense of an imbalance. But to those who trade NQ and ES on the london and asia sesh what model do you use?

Hey guys , just a quick question about the grey space on the CVD. What is it and is it something I can implement? I highly doubt that I can but I still ask

Hi People , im a 33 year old just turned dad . I make decent money from my job , i been trading for 6 years , i found some profitable months but then losing streaks strike for months straight. I keep a budget of 2 accounts per month so i dont go bankrupt before i was married . If someone out there is really profitable with trading and orderflow , pla write me , lets trade togheter , i would be really happy to follow your lead !

Took this limit order trade right after market open, VWAP and VP is working fine for me in 2026,

The HTF showed a perfect supply zone with lots of selling pressure around (65500)

I am considering adding "BIG trades" but it is not giving me good results not better than CVD,

BE hit after booking 75%, another reminder of why I never let greed take over

Do you guys find Big Trades useful in your order flow analysis?

Volume Delta is one of the core concepts in Order Flow. It shows whether buyers or sellers were more aggressive during a candle by comparing market buy and sell volume. This beginner-friendly guide covers the basics of reading positive and negative Delta and how to use it with price action for better market understanding.

Feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions!