- Open Interest (OI)
- The total number of futures/perpetual contracts currently open (not yet closed). Rising OI with rising price means new money is entering long - a real trend. Rising OI with falling price means new shorts are piling in. Falling OI means positions are closing, not opening - a weaker, more fragile move either direction.
- CVD (Cumulative Volume Delta)
- A running total of aggressive buy volume minus aggressive sell volume (market orders that took liquidity, not passive limit orders). When price rises but CVD is flat or falling, buyers are running out of steam even though price hasn't caught up yet - a bearish divergence worth watching.
- Long/Short Ratio
- The split between long and short positions currently open on an exchange, usually shown as a percentage. A heavy skew toward one side (e.g. 65%+ long) means the crowd is crowded into one trade - which is exactly the setup that gets liquidated when price moves the other way.
- Funding Rate
- A periodic payment (typically every 8 hours) between long and short traders on a perpetual futures contract, designed to keep its price tethered to the spot price. Positive funding means longs pay shorts (the market is long-heavy); negative means shorts pay longs (short-heavy). Extreme funding in either direction signals an overcrowded, fragile position that's expensive to hold.
- Liquidation
- The forced closure of a leveraged position when losses eat through the trader's margin. Exchanges do this automatically to prevent the account from going negative. A cluster of liquidations at nearby price levels can cascade - each forced close pushes price further, triggering the next cluster.
- Squeeze / Flush Score
- A composite 0-100 score blending funding rate and long/short ratio to estimate how overcrowded one side of the market is. A high score on the short side means shorts are overpaying and overcrowded - fuel for a squeeze (a sharp move up that forces them to buy back). A high score on the long side signals the mirror case: a flush risk to the downside.
- Whale Trade
- A single large trade (this app flags trades above a per-coin dollar threshold, e.g. $5M+ on BTC) that's big enough to move markets or signal institutional intent on its own, distinct from the steady flow of smaller retail orders.
- Accumulation
- A pattern where large players appear to be steadily building a position - typically open interest and price both rising while the move stays orderly rather than explosive, suggesting size is being absorbed rather than chased.
- Distribution
- The mirror of accumulation: price still grinding up, but flow underneath (order book imbalance, weakening taker-buy ratio, open interest unwinding even as price rises) suggests large players are quietly selling into strength rather than adding. A classic pattern before a local top.
- Carry Arbitrage
- A delta-neutral trade that profits purely from an extreme funding rate: go long spot and short the equivalent perpetual (or vice versa when funding is very negative), collecting the funding payment without taking on directional price risk.