Market depth

The bid and ask on your chart are the best prices on offer right now. Market depth shows what sits behind them: the next prices up and down, and how much volume is quoted at each one. In eTrader it is a narrow panel next to the chart, and it moves with the live price.

Open the depth panel

• Web terminal: press the Market depth button at the right end of the chart toolbar. The panel docks to the right side of the chart. Press the button again, or the cross in the panel's header, to close it.
• iPhone and Android: tap the depth icon at the top of the chart. A sheet slides up with the book for the instrument on screen.

The panel is titled Depth and the instrument, for example Depth XAUUSD. Change the instrument on the chart and the panel follows it.

Reading the ladder

The panel has two columns, Price and Volume, and three parts from top to bottom:

1. Asks, in the sell colour. These are offers to sell, so they are the prices you would buy at. The lowest ask sits at the bottom of this block, right above the spread.
2. Spread, a single row in the middle with the gap between the best ask and the best bid, in pips.
3. Bids, in the buy colour. These are the prices you would sell at. The highest bid sits at the top of this block, right under the spread.

Behind each row is a shaded bar. Its length is that level's volume compared with the largest level in the book, so a thick level stands out at a glance. When the volume at a price changes, the row flashes briefly. If your device is set to reduce motion, the flash is left out.

Between updates of the book, the levels shift with the live bid and ask, so the ladder always lines up with the price on your chart rather than lagging a step behind it.

Where the levels come from

Depth is published by your Broker, and each Broker decides how much of it to pass on. Depending on the Broker and the instrument you may see:

• The full book the provider sends.
• A set number of levels on each side.
• Top of book only, which is one bid and one ask.

If the panel says No market depth for this symbol., the Broker is not publishing depth for that instrument. The chart and the ticket work as normal. If it says Depth is not available right now, the terminal could not load the book at that moment; it tries again on its own while the panel is open.

The book shows the levels your Broker's provider quotes. For instruments traded between banks and Brokers rather than on one exchange, that is one provider's view of the market, not every order anywhere in the world. Read it as the liquidity your Broker can see.

Depth with more than one chart

In the web terminal, the depth panel belongs to the chart you are working on. In a two, three or four chart layout it docks to the right of the focused chart. Click another chart and the panel moves there and switches to that chart's instrument. There is one depth panel at a time.

A chart opened in its own browser tab does not have the depth button. Keep depth on the chart in the main terminal window. The chart layouts guide explains focus and detached charts.

Depth next to a tick chart

Depth shows what is waiting at each price. A tick chart shows what the price actually did, change by change, with the bid and ask drawn as two lines. Side by side they answer different questions about the same moment: how much is quoted near the price, and how the price is moving through it.

Neither one places or changes an order. To trade from what you see, use the ticket or the chart, as in the placing orders guide.