Order book lopsidedness
Also shown as Book imbalance percentile, Order-book imbalance rank
Describes how unusually large the imbalance is in either direction relative to this symbol's recent observations. Taking the absolute imbalance removes the bid-versus-ask sign.
- Live monitoring
- Binance Futures only; depends on the full setup
- Observed
- read at the minute itself
- Unit
- Percentile rank
- Valid range
- 0 to 1
How to read it, with examples
How to read it
The percentile scale is a normal-CDF transform of a rolling z-score, not a counted share of historical minutes. A value of 0.5 corresponds to the rolling mean magnitude; 0.9 is about 1.28 rolling standard deviations above it. Low values mean smaller-than-usual magnitude. Statistics update at most once per 10 seconds; 100 updates are required. With degenerate variance, the last valid rank holds, or remains absent if none exists.
Find unusually uneven best quotes for the same symbol without imposing one raw imbalance threshold on every market. Read the signed imbalance alongside it.
What it does not prove
A value of 0.9 does not mean bids dominate, a 90% chance of a move, or that exactly 90% of recorded observations were lower.
Technical details
Registry definition
Historical percentile rank of absolute book imbalance.
Engine note
It is separate from the snapshot API's counted full-record percentile metadata.
Field ID
feature.book_imbalance_pctrank
Valid query operators
at least, at most, between
Window operators: lowest, highest, average, latest or change in, over a trailing window.
Editable query preset
Starting point only. Review and edit before running.
{
"schema_version": "research_query.v2",
"normalization_version": "archive_normalization.v1",
"feature_version": "feature_defs.v1",
"target": "record_occurrences",
"where": {
"all": [
[
"feature.book_imbalance_pctrank",
"gte",
0.9
],
[
"times.anchor_time",
"gte",
"2025-07-15T00:00:00.000Z"
]
]
},
"sort": [
"times.anchor_time",
"desc"
],
"page": {
"limit": 5,
"cursor": null
}
}The search reports how often the record held this condition and what followed. It does not decide whether an idea works.