Crypto and intraday
Crypto Liquidation Radar
Liquidation and volume-spike radar for crypto.
Crypto Liquidation Radar reads the volume footprint of forced exits. When one side of the book gets aggressively flushed out, it normalizes that burst with a z-score, grades how extreme it was, and waits for a Supertrend flip in the same direction to confirm a LONG or SHORT. Its one job: catch the liquidation spike, then confirm the turn that follows it.
What it does
- Pulls aggressive buy and sell volume from a lower timeframe through TradingView's up/down volume request, so the chart bar is broken into who was actually hitting the book.
- Normalizes each side with a z-score over a 200-bar baseline, so a spike is measured against what is normal for the symbol rather than a raw volume number.
- Flags a liquidation spike when the z-score clears the threshold against the prevailing Supertrend regime: a buy-side flush while trend is bearish, or a sell-side flush while trend is bullish.
- Grades every spike Normal, Strong, or Extreme by how far past the threshold it ran.
- Arms on the spike and confirms a LONG or SHORT only when Supertrend then flips in the liquidation's direction inside the timeout window.
- Tracks the whole engine in a corner dashboard: trend, last liquidation side, its z-score, its strength, and the live status (Idle, Armed, Confirmed).
Try it
The main control is the Z-Score Threshold: how far outside normal a volume burst must be to count as a liquidation. Drag it. A low threshold flags many spikes, including weak ones. Raise it and only the strongest flushes survive.
Synthetic data, for illustration. Bars are aggressive buy and sell volume; dots mark bars whose z-score clears the threshold, sized by strength (Normal / Strong / Extreme). Raise the threshold and the weaker spikes drop out. The real indicator confirms direction with a Supertrend flip and runs on your TradingView chart.
In plain words
The bars show how much eager buying (up) and selling (down) hit the market each moment. Every so often one side panics and dumps a huge amount at once, and that spike gets a dot. The little number on the dot says how far the burst stood out from normal, so a bigger number means a heavier flush.
The slider sets how big a burst has to be before it gets flagged, so dragging it up leaves only the heaviest ones on the chart. On your real chart the tool then waits for the trend to actually turn before it calls a LONG or SHORT, so it never acts on the spike alone.
The live tool reads aggressive buy and sell volume on a lower timeframe, normalizes it with the z-score, and confirms direction only when a Supertrend flip follows the spike inside the timeout window.
Markets, phases, timeframes
Assets and markets
- Built for crypto, where liquidation cascades move price the most and the up/down volume split is most meaningful.
- Most reliable on majors and large-cap alts like BTC and ETH, where order-book depth makes the buy/sell imbalance real.
- On thin or illiquid pairs the imbalance is noise and the engine produces false positives. The tool draws a red No Volume flag when the feed has no volume to work with.
- Equities and forex have a different volume footprint, so the reads are less reliable there than on crypto.
Market phases
- Trend continuation: a strong liquidation in the direction of the trend means the other side just got flushed and the move has room to run.
- Capitulation and blow-off: a strong liquidation against the trend often marks a panic low or a blow-off high, a mean-reversion zone where price tends to snap back.
- Quiet range: with no real flushes the z-score stays inside the threshold and the radar simply goes quiet. That is the radar working as intended. There is nothing to act on.
Timeframes
| Timeframe | Use |
|---|---|
| 5m to 15m | Intraday crypto futures. Set the lower timeframe one or two steps below the chart, for example a 15m chart reading 5m volume. |
| 1h | The balanced default for active crypto. Enough flushes to act on without drowning in noise. |
| 4h to 1D | BTC and ETH swing context. Fewer but heavier liquidation events, cleaner confirmations. |
What you see on the chart
Liquidation dots print above or below the bar, graded by strength. A Supertrend line and a soft fill color the regime, candles repaint to the confirmed direction, and LONG or SHORT arrows mark confirmed signals. A corner dashboard ties it together.
A long-side liquidation was confirmed: a sell-side flush happened while trend was bearish, then Supertrend flipped bullish inside the timeout.
A short-side liquidation was confirmed: a buy-side flush happened while trend was bullish, then Supertrend flipped bearish inside the timeout.
A small dot for a spike just over the threshold (excess under 1.5). Worth a glance, but it rarely decides anything on its own.
A larger dot for a clearly outsized flush (excess from 1.5 to 3). The kind of print that tends to mark a turn or an acceleration.
The biggest dot for a rare, violent liquidation (excess 3 or more). High conviction, but confirm direction before acting.
The bullish (green) or bearish (red) regime line, with a faint fill between it and the bar midpoint. The line shows only on the confirmed side.
The dashboard in the top-right corner reports the engine in five rows. Strength is color-coded in the dashboard: grey for Normal, orange for Strong, purple for Extreme.
| Dashboard row | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Trend | Confirmed regime (Bullish / Bearish) or the pre-confirmation read (Bullish Setup / Bearish Setup / Neutral). |
| Last liquidation | Side of the most recent qualifying spike: Long, Short, or None. |
| Z-Score | The z-score value of that last liquidation, or n/a if none yet. |
| Strength | Normal, Strong, or Extreme, graded from the z-score excess over the threshold. |
| Status | Engine state: Idle, Armed Long / Armed Short after a spike, or Confirmed Long / Confirmed Short on the signal bar. |
How to use it
Check the Supertrend color and the dashboard Trend row. The radar only arms on a flush that runs against the current regime, so know which way the trend leans before a dot prints.
A liquidation dot tells you one side just got flushed. The next few bars decide whether the move extends or reverses. Do not act on the dot by itself.
Strong or Extreme in the trend direction is continuation. Strong or Extreme against the trend is a mean-reversion zone. The grade tells you which kind of print you are looking at.
The engine arms on the spike and confirms only when Supertrend flips in that direction inside the timeout. Watch the Status row move from Armed to Confirmed, and let the LONG or SHORT arrow print on a closed bar.
Raise the threshold on a noisy pair to keep only real flushes, lower it on a calm one. The demo above shows exactly how that filters the spikes.
Two clean scenarios:
- Continuation long: trend is bullish, a Strong sell-side flush prints below a bar (shorts capitulating into the move), Status stays in the bullish regime, price pushes on with the trend.
- Reversal long: trend is bearish, an Extreme sell-side flush marks a panic low, then Supertrend flips bullish inside the timeout and a LONG arrow confirms the turn.
When to ignore it:
- The No Volume flag is showing. Without volume the up/down split is meaningless and every read is suspect.
- You are on a thin, low-volume pair. The imbalance is noise and the dots are not trustworthy.
- A dot printed but Status never left Armed and the timeout has passed. The expected trend flip did not arrive, so there is no confirmed trade.
- The market is in a tight, newsless range. Small z-score wobbles are not liquidations.
Settings and signals
| Parameter | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
Lower Timeframe | 15 | The timeframe the up/down volume request runs on. Keep it below the chart timeframe so the bar gets a meaningful buy/sell breakdown. |
Z-Score Length | 200 | Lookback for the mean and standard deviation used to z-score volume. Higher means a more stable baseline and fewer false spikes. |
Z-Score Threshold | 3.0 | Minimum z-score for a burst to register as a liquidation. Higher means fewer but stronger spikes. |
Liquidation Timeout Bars | 50 | Maximum bars between a qualifying liquidation and the Supertrend flip that confirms it. Set 0 for no timeout. |
Bull | #00C896 | Color used for bullish states, dots, and the LONG arrow. |
Bear | #FF3B30 | Color used for bearish states, dots, and the SHORT arrow. |
Show Trend Lines | On | Plots the Supertrend line on the confirmed side. |
Show Trend Fill | On | Fills the area between the bar midpoint and the Supertrend line. |
Show Liquidation Marks | On | Draws the liquidation dots above and below bars at the three strength levels. |
Paint Candles | On | Recolors candles by the current confirmed signal direction. |
Show Dashboard | On | Shows the top-right status dashboard. |
Signal Size | small | Size of the LONG and SHORT arrow markers (tiny, small, or normal). |
Signals and how each one fires:
| Signal | Condition |
|---|---|
| Short Liquidation Spike | Supertrend is bearish and buy-side z-score is above the threshold (a buy-side flush against a down regime). |
| Long Liquidation Spike | Supertrend is bullish and sell-side z-score is above the threshold (a sell-side flush against an up regime). |
| Confirmed SHORT | After a short-side spike armed the engine, Supertrend crosses under zero inside the timeout. The arrow prints once. |
| Confirmed LONG | After a long-side spike armed the engine, Supertrend crosses over zero inside the timeout. The arrow prints once. |
| Strength grade | Excess is z-score minus threshold. Normal under 1.5, Strong from 1.5 up to 3, Extreme at 3 or more. |
Glossary
- Liquidation
- A forced exit. When a leveraged position can no longer cover its margin, the exchange closes it at market, dumping size onto one side of the book. A cascade is many of these firing at once.
- Up/down volume
- The split of a bar's volume into aggressive buying and aggressive selling, pulled from a lower timeframe. It shows which side was hitting the book, so you see the direction of the pressure behind the bar.
- Z-score
- How many standard deviations a value sits from its own recent average. A z-score of 3 means a burst roughly three times the normal spread above average, far enough out that it reads as a genuine flush.
- Supertrend
- A trend filter built from ATR. It sits below price in an uptrend and above price in a downtrend, and flips sides when the trend changes. Here it defines the regime and provides the confirmation flip.
- ATR
- Average True Range, a measure of how much price typically moves per bar. The tool uses it to offset the liquidation dots a clean distance above the high or below the low.
- Armed
- The in-between state after a qualifying spike. The engine has seen the flush and is waiting for a Supertrend flip in the same direction before it confirms a signal.
Risk and position size
The radar tells you where a flush happened and when the trend confirms it. It does not size your trade or place your stop. That is on you, and liquidation events in crypto are violent, so getting position size right matters all the more here.
Decide what you are willing to lose on one trade, commonly 1% of account equity. That number is your risk budget. Position size comes out of the math below.
For a confirmed LONG off a flush, put the stop beyond the capitulation low that produced the dot. The distance from entry to that stop is your risk per unit.
Position size equals your risk budget divided by the per-unit stop distance. A wider stop means a smaller position for the same risk.
In plain words
Say your account is 10,000 USD and you risk 1%, so 100 USD per trade. An Extreme sell-side flush marks a panic low at 60,000, Supertrend flips bullish, and a LONG confirms at 60,600. You set the stop just under the low at 59,800, so your risk is 800 USD per coin.
100 USD divided by 800 USD is 0.125, so you size about 0.125 of the asset. If a tighter setup put the stop at 60,200 instead (400 USD risk), the same 100 USD would let you hold 0.25. The radar found the spot. Your stop and this math sized it.
Common mistakes
- Trading the dot instead of the confirmation. A spike is an event to watch. Wait for Status to reach Confirmed and the arrow to print before you treat it as an entry.
- Reading a with-trend flush as a reversal. A Strong dot in the trend direction is continuation fuel. The turn signal comes from a flush against the trend.
- Running it on thin, low-volume pairs where the up/down split is noise. Stick to majors and large caps.
- Ignoring the No Volume flag. If it is showing, every read on the chart is unreliable.
- Cranking the threshold down to see more dots, then drowning in weak spikes. Start at the default of 3.0 and lower it only with a reason.
- Acting on an Armed state that already timed out. If the flip never came inside the timeout, there is no trade.
Limitations
- On thin or illiquid pairs the volume imbalance is noisy and the engine produces false positives. Stick to majors and large caps.
- It is built around crypto volume behavior. On equities and forex the footprint is different and the reads are less reliable.
- A spike alone is not a signal. The confirmed entry needs the Supertrend flip that follows it, which can arrive late or not at all.
- Confirmation is built on closed bars and a flip that lags the spike, so the tool will not call the exact top or bottom in real time.
- It flags events, it does not forecast price.
Educational tool. Not financial advice. Trading involves risk.
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