The Liquidation Profile files past forced closures by the price they occurred at instead of the day. What comes out is a chart of the levels where margin has previously run out, which is a separate enquiry from when that happened.

Levels matter because leverage is placed with reference to price. Traders enter near the same round numbers and set stops at similar distances, so the places where positions have been forced out once tend to be crowded again.

What it actually measures

Each band along the price axis carries the weight of forced closures that occurred there. A heavy band is a level that has repeatedly proved unsurvivable for leveraged positions, and it is heavy because many separate episodes contributed to it.

The distance between the heaviest bands and the current price is the reading. A dense cluster close to spot is a hazard within reach, and the same cluster far below is history rather than a live concern.

The distribution above and below spot deserves reading separately. Weight below is where long positions have broken and weight above is where short ones have, and a market with heavy bands on one side only is asymmetric in a way the aggregate hides.

A price level is a better address than a date

A liquidation history sorted by date answers what has already happened and is finished with. Sorted by price it becomes something a reader can use, because price returns to levels and calendars do not repeat.

This is not a picture of where liquidations sit right now. Live position data would be needed for that and it is not public. What the profile offers instead is the record of which levels have historically been crowded, which is the closest honest answer available.

Cascade Detector: size and self-reinforcement are separate questions

The view watches for forced selling arriving as a self-reinforcing sequence rather than as a single event. What separates the two is whether each wave of closures moved price far enough to cause the wave after it.

Most liquidation charts answer how much, and the volume of forced closures on a given day is genuinely useful. What they cannot see is the thing that makes a cascade dangerous, which is whether the closures caused each other.

One very large position closing is an event with an ending. A sequence where each round of forced selling triggers the next has no natural stopping point until the stops run out, and it produces moves that look wildly disproportionate to anything happening in the underlying market.

Liquidation Dominance: dollars measure the event, share measures the direction

The reading is a share, so it stays comparable between a violent session and a calm one. A market where one side supplies nearly all the forced closures is behaving in a specific way regardless of how much money changed hands.

A liquidation total answers how much, and it does that well. What it cannot do is stay comparable across regimes, because a large day in a quiet market and a small day in a violent one become indistinguishable once both are expressed in dollars.

Converting to a share repairs that. The reading becomes independent of how big the market grew, so a lopsided session from a thin period can be set directly against one from a frenzied stretch. That comparability is what makes the extremes worth reading at all.

Liquidations by Exchange: a cascade has an address

When the bars pile up at one exchange, the trouble began there. Its own users ran out of margin and the wider market inherited the consequence, which is a materially different episode from one where everybody repriced together.

Headline liquidation totals present forced selling as a thing the market experiences collectively. In practice it happens at one exchange, governed by that exchange’s margin engine and absorbed by whatever depth that exchange had, and the resulting orders then set the print the rest of the industry values positions at.

Identifying the exchange is therefore a separate question from measuring the damage. Wherever margin is loosest and users are most geared, that is where positions fail earliest, and the selling it produces reaches every other order book no matter how prudently they were run.

Liquidation Calendar: the empty cells are half the information

Each session claims an identical square, which keeps unremarkable days legible instead of letting a few record events flatten them onto the baseline. The colour scale is chosen with that in mind.

Attention goes naturally to the dark days, because those are the events. They are also the part already covered by every other liquidation view on the dashboard, and reading only those is reading the aftermath.

What the grid adds is the shape of the gaps. A long calm patch is the condition under which positions accumulate undisturbed, so the size of the next clear-out is being set during the stretch when nothing appears to be happening.

What it does not tell you

The profile records where leverage broke in the past, and current positioning may sit somewhere else entirely. Levels that were crowded through one cycle can be empty in the next.

Reported liquidation totals vary with exchange conventions, so the relative weight of one band against another is more dependable than any absolute figure attached to either of them.

A cluster is not a barrier. Price passes through heavy bands regularly, sometimes with a sharp move and sometimes without pausing at all, and treating one as support reads more into it than the record supports.

How to read it

Loaded. A heavy cluster sits close to spot, so a modest move reaches levels that have broken leverage before.

Clear. The nearest clusters are some distance away, with little sitting immediately overhead or below.

Diffuse. Weight is spread thinly with no dominant band, so no single level stands out as crowded.

The Liquidation Profile lives on the Futures dashboard among Liquidation History, Liquidation Calendar and Cascade Detector.

Common questions

Is this a map of current positions?

No. Live position data is not public. The profile records where forced closures have happened historically, which is the closest available answer to the same question.

Why sort by price rather than by date?

Because price revisits levels and dates never repeat. A level that has forced positions out before can do so again, whereas a day that did so is finished.

Does a heavy band act as support?

Not dependably. Price moves through dense bands often, sometimes sharply and sometimes without pausing, so a band describes crowding rather than any barrier.

Why read above and below separately?

Because they mean opposite things. Weight below spot is where long positions have broken and weight above is where short ones have, and the asymmetry between them is easy to lose in a combined total.

How reliable are the underlying totals?

Exchange reporting conventions differ, so relative weights are far more dependable than absolute figures. Comparing one band against another is sound; quoting a dollar total is not.

What separates a cascade from a big day?

Whether the closures caused each other. One large position being closed is a single event, and a cascade is a sequence in which each round of forced selling triggers the round after it.

Why use a share rather than dollars?

Because a share stays comparable between a violent market and a quiet one. The dollar total answers how much, and only the share answers which side in a form that holds up across regimes.

Why single out the exchange it started at?

Because margin engines are not interchangeable. Whichever exchange runs the loosest rules, the shallowest book or the most geared clientele fails earliest, and the orders it dumps then set the print the rest of the industry values positions at.

Why lay these out as a grid of days?

Because most days are empty and a handful are enormous. On a line the enormous days own the scale and everything else lies flat. On a grid each session claims the same square, so quiet weeks stay legible.