CVD and BSV

What "taker" means

Every trade has two sides, a maker (resting limit order) and a taker (the aggressive side that crossed the spread). Taker buys mean somebody was willing to lift the offer; taker sells mean somebody hit the bid. Aggressive flow is the directional read.

The data we publish is sourced from Kiyotaka, which classifies each fill on the trade tape as taker-buy or taker-sell. Both panels then aggregate that across time.

BSV, buy / sell volume

BSV plots two stacked series per bar: green for taker buys, red for taker sells. Numbers are absolute (not net), so you read both height and balance at once. A 1m bar with $50M of buys and $10M of sells reads as aggressive accumulation regardless of whether price ticked up or down.

Source toggle in the panel: PERP (taker flow on perpetual contracts), SPOT (taker flow on spot venues), or BOTH (sum). Spot and perp tell different stories, perp leads, spot accumulates, and the toggle lets you read either or together.

CVD, cumulative volume delta

CVD takes the per-bar delta (taker buys minus taker sells) and sums it forward. The result is a line: rising = net taker aggression to the upside, falling = net taker aggression to the downside. CVD doesn't reset at session boundaries, it's a running tally over the visible window.

CVD is read against price. Both rising = trend confirmed, taker flow is driving the move. Both falling = same. Divergence is where the signal lives.

Why perp CVD and spot CVD diverge

They measure different cohorts. Perp takers are mostly leveraged speculators reacting in real time, they over-react and chase. Spot takers are slower, often allocators or whale buyers accumulating at scale. Watching both side-by-side surfaces mismatched intentions:

• Spot CVD up, perp CVD flat, quiet accumulation, minimal speculative interest. Often early-cycle.
• Spot CVD up, perp CVD up hard, speculation joining real demand. Trend confirmed, but leverage is now building (see OI).
• Spot CVD down, perp CVD up, perp longs are chasing into spot distribution. Often a local-top setup.
• Spot CVD up, perp CVD down, spot accumulation against perp shorts. Often a short squeeze setup.

The divergence detector

The CVDX panel scans for the price-vs-CVD divergence pattern automatically and tags occurrences directly on the chart. Bullish divergence (lower price low + higher CVD low) and bearish divergence (higher price high + lower CVD high) are flagged without you having to eyeball the lines.

Aggressive-taker dominance

The AGRDOM panel is a different cut: per-venue taker dominance across the venues Kiyotaka covers. Which venue's takers are leading the move? Sometimes one perp venue leads while the others follow; sometimes the aggression is concentrated on a single tape. Knowing which venue is the aggressor helps when reading liquidation cascades and when guessing how much further the move can run.