Orderflow trading in India

Trading
1

Hey everyone,

I’m a bit confused about order flow tools in Indian markets.

From what I understand, exchanges like NSE/BSE don’t provide:
Full public order book history
True bid/ask aggressor tagging (needed for real footprint/delta)

If that’s the case, how are platforms like TradingView or GoCharting offering footprint charts and similar tools? Are these based on real data or just approximations?

My context:
I got into orderflow after watching US traders like Andrea Cimi, Fabio Valentini, and Carmine Rosato, and tried applying similar concepts here.

But now I’m realizing US markets (like CME futures) might have much more detailed data compared to India.

So just trying to understand:

Are these footprint tools actually reliable in India?
Or are they just estimated visuals based on volume/price?

Would appreciate any clarity on this :pray:

2

Bookmap, a global order flow charting provider for professional traders, was initially launched in India.

However, they eventually discontinued the product after realizing that the available market data wasn’t sufficient for order flow tools to function effectively.

This highlights an important point: while you can invest a lot of time in analyzing order flow charts and tools, the reality is that even the so called tick-by-tick aggregated data available to the public is often too limited for these techniques to work well in intraday trading in our country.

2 Likes
3

I think if they are formed from tick by tick data then they are, at colocation exchanges provide all the data, order books etc, if vendors are buying it then it should be fine I think.

4

Thank u sir
Really appreciate you taking time to reply…
I have been stuck with this…for quite some time and have been asking this question on almost all indian trading communities on reddit…

1 Like
5

Thank you very much sir…really appreciate it

6

You can use Order Flow/Footprint charts in the Indian market as well. Several indicator providers offer Order Flow and Market Profile specifically for Indian markets. However, the data you receive is typically level 1 tick-by-tick data, where you will get 1 best bid/ask price per second.

You’re also correct that there are no vendors offering full market depth (Level 2 &3) data for the Indian market. This is because exchanges primarily provide Level 1 tick-by-tick data to data vendors, which restricts access to deeper order book information for the Indian Market.

7

Yeah, you’re pretty much on the right track.

Indian exchanges don’t give true bid/ask aggressor data like CME, so whatever footprint/delta you see here is mostly derived, not actual.

I’ve been using Mirra Charts’ order flow indicator myself, and it works fine for spotting volume clusters and reactions, but I don’t rely on the delta part as “real” order flow.

There are a few Indian providers like VolumeLens, Proflow, etc., doing similar stuff — all based on approximations using tick/price movement.

So overall, it’s useful for context, just don’t treat it like pure order flow data you see in US markets.