How to turn on trade bubbles

Trade bubbles are executed trades drawn on the chart as circles: the centre marks the price and time the trade was received, the size follows the trade’s value, and the colour is the aggressor side (green when the taker bought, red when the taker sold). There are two places they appear, and they are switched on differently.

On candles: large prints (free, on by default)

Every candle chart draws trades that are well above the market’s typical size as bubbles. Nothing to enable: open any market and the large prints are already there. To adjust them:

1. Open the Layers menu in the chart toolbar.
2. Trade bubbles (large prints) is the toggle.
3. Minimum value sets the quote value a trade needs to draw. 0 is automatic: eight times the market’s typical trade size over the last minute, recalibrated as the session runs, so a quiet alt and BTC each show only their own outliers.

Hover a bubble to read the trade: side, price, size, value and time. Each bubble is one received trade record; the exchange may aggregate fills, and nothing is inferred.

Every trade: real-time mode

Real-time mode replaces candles with the observed order book, every trade as a bubble, and the sampled spread on one time and price axis. It is the Real-time pill beside the timeframes in the chart toolbar (1m, 5m, 15m … then Real-time). Click it to switch; click any timeframe to return to candles.

While real-time mode is on, the caret on the pill opens its settings: trade bubbles on or off, a trade-price line, one-second observed candles, automatic market sizing or a manual minimum, and the reported-liquidation diamonds and activity strip.

Access. On hosted live markets, real-time mode is a Pro view; the pill shows a padlock on a Free account and opens the plan comparison when clicked. Recorded replays open real-time mode for everyone, which is why the welcome replay after sign-up starts in it. The open-source renderer and local recordings need no account.

If you cannot see any bubbles

• Candles, no bubbles at all: the automatic floor needs about 32 trades to calibrate on a fresh chart. On a very quiet market that can take a minute; set a manual Minimum value to draw sooner.
• Candles, bubbles look sparse: that is the point of the candle overlay. It shows outliers, not the tape. Real-time mode shows every trade.
• Real-time shows a padlock: you are on a Free account on a live market. Open a replay or an archived event to use real-time mode, or compare plans on the pricing page.
• Real-time shows trades but no depth after a seek: depth history clears on a seek and waits for a fresh synchronized book. Open the recording at its start and play through, or switch to candles.

Related: order flow for reading aggressor-side trades, and DOM and tape for the same prints in the ladder column.