HOW IT WORKS
From price to read. In four steps.
Volwick doesn’t add indicators to the chart: it adds the information price alone doesn’t show. Structure, executions, options pressure and a read that brings them together, on the same price.
Step 1 of 4
THE FOUR STEPS
Each step answers a different question.
01 · STRUCTURE
First, understand where
the market is forced to react.
Dealers who sell options have to hedge. Dealer Walls draws the strikes where that forced hedging is heaviest; Exposure Maps shows behind the candles whether, at that price, hedging slows the market down or pushes it.
Check the regime first: in a positive regime the walls act as brakes, in a negative regime they become triggers.
- Green and red walls: they slow price
- Cyan and magenta walls: they accelerate it
- Green dampens, red amplifies
02 · EXECUTIONS
Then look at
who is really acting.
On SPY and QQQ, Dark Pool brings large off-exchange executions onto the chart, with price, size and notional. When they cluster at the same price, a level forms.
On every market with volume, CVD measures large players’ aggression: only executions above the threshold, so the noise stays out.
- Prints above threshold
- Levels from at least three executions
- Divergences between price and CVD
03 · PRESSURE
Measure where
the day’s premium is going.
CDI shows minute by minute how much premium goes into calls and puts expiring today, single-leg trades only. A tall, isolated bar is someone who just spent real money.
Options Flow accumulates that same premium by executed side: the net’s zero crossing is the moment directional premium switches sides.
- Spike on a wall
- Net above or below zero
- Data age in the header
04 · READ
Finally, put it all
in the same sentence.
Market Intelligence reads what the chart shows and puts it into words: verdict, conviction, magnet, setup, regime and levels. Always in the same order.
It doesn’t predict direction, and it says so: when price runs against the score, it drops to NEUTRAL on its own.
- Verdict and conviction
- One of the seven setups
- Levels above and below price
READS THE CHART
↑ LONG SPY
MED conviction · 4.1
MAGNET 773.50 (γ+15) · ↑↑ LEAN LONG
RANGE · 772.00 ↔ 773.50
RANGE-BOUND DAY
THE RULE
No single data point is a trade. Two sources at the same price are.
A heavy dealer wall that lines up with a Dark Pool level is the strongest read the chart can produce: the book and the tape point to the same price. Then you wait for price to get there.
ONE DAY
How the read changes from the open to the close.
The terminal doesn’t say the same thing all day. The structure tightens as the hours go by, and the panel tells you so.
THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES
Open the terminal. Do these five things, in order.
The first two steps are there to make sure the data on screen is real, before you interpret it.
- 01Check the connection
Top right, you should see Connected with a green dot and the latency, for example 437ms. Gray means the market is closed, red means price has stopped updating.
Connected · 437ms - 02Check the book
The dot next to the instrument tells you whether the dealer book is healthy. Open it once and read where the walls come from, what time and how many seconds ago.
via SPX · GEX dealer walls - 03Choose the instrument
Eleven markets from the same bar. To learn, start with SPX, ES or MES: they have every book layer.
SPX · ES · MES - 04Set the three controls
WALLS, METRIC and EXPIRY. The default is Top 15, GEX, All. If you’re just starting out, begin with Top 5: it’s the honest read.
Top 5 · GEX · All - 05Read the panel
READS THE CHART is open by default: verdict, regime, setup and levels. It’s the fastest way to understand what the screen is telling you.
READS THE CHART