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Tape print

A single executed trade as published on the consolidated tape, showing price, size, venue and condition flags.

Reading prints is the oldest form of order flow analysis. The useful information is not the price alone but the combination: size relative to average, which side of the spread it landed on, the venue, and the condition code.

A print is history, not intent. By the time it appears, the liquidity it consumed is gone, and an off-exchange print reports a trade that may have been agreed seconds earlier.

Example: on time-and-sales you see 200, 300, 100 shares at the offer, then a single 150,000-share print at the midpoint carrying an off-exchange code. The small prints are live taking; the big one is a completed block being reported and offers nothing to trade against.

Related: time-and-sales, trade-condition-codes, consolidated-tape, trade-reporting-facility

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Bid-ask spread in an order bookSell orders stacked above buy orders with a gap between the best of each.SELLERS (asks)50.0690050.051,40050.0460050.011,10050.002,30049.99800spread = 0.03BUYERS (bids)
The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.