GIO4X Labs · Experiment

Order book in 3D

Buyers on one side, sellers on the other, and a gap between them. A model you can turn, built to explain an idea. It is an illustration, not market data.

Illustration, not market data

Front row: what is waiting at each price. Back row: the running total out from the middle. The strip between them is the spread. The heights are generated from a fixed seed to make the idea visible; there are no prices or quantities in it.

Six readings of one book

Each reading describes one part of the figure.

01
The whole book
An order book is the list of orders waiting to trade: buyers on one side, sellers on the other, ranked by price. Lower prices are to the left, higher to the right.
02
Bids: the buyers
Each bar on the left is one price at which buyers are waiting. Its height is how much is waiting there. The bar nearest the middle is the best bid: the highest price any buyer is offering.
03
Asks: the sellers
Each bar on the right is one price at which sellers are waiting. The bar nearest the middle is the best ask: the lowest price any seller will accept.
04
The spread
The gap between the best bid and the best ask. Nobody is waiting inside it. Buying at once means paying the ask and selling at once means receiving the bid, so the gap is a cost of trading immediately.
05
Depth
The back row adds the bars up, from the middle outwards: how much is waiting at this price or better. A book that rises steeply is deep; a shallow one moves further for the same order.
06
A market order walks the book
A buy order at market takes the nearest asks first. If it is larger than the best ask, it carries on into the next level and the next, at a worse price each time. That difference is slippage.

SimulationSource: A seeded generator, the same on every visitAn illustration of how an order book is laid out. It is not a feed, a snapshot or a reconstruction of any market, and it is not how GIO4X or its liquidity providers quote.

What it is, and is not

A diagram with depth. Not a market.

The shapes come from a generator with a fixed seed, so the model is the same on every visit and nothing in it moves by itself. To see what a spread costs in figures you choose yourself, use the Spread visualiser.

What the model leaves out

Prices and quantities. The heights are relative, and generated: they belong to no instrument and no moment.
Time. A real book changes many times a second as orders arrive, are cancelled and are filled; this one stands still so that it can be read.
Hidden and off-book liquidity, which no displayed book shows.
How any particular venue, GIO4X or its liquidity providers quote. Over-the-counter products such as CFDs are priced by the provider, not on a central book.

Bids are drawn in the site’s “positive” colour and asks in its “negative” colour only to tell the two sides apart; neither is good or bad, and each side is also named on the model. The 3D view needs WebGL: where it is not available a flat figure stands in its place and the readings are unchanged. Data methodology

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Six readings of one book

Each reading describes one part of the figure.

The whole book

An order book is the list of orders waiting to trade: buyers on one side, sellers on the other, ranked by price. Lower prices are to the left, higher to the right.

Bids: the buyers

Each bar on the left is one price at which buyers are waiting. Its height is how much is waiting there. The bar nearest the middle is the best bid: the highest price any buyer is offering.

Asks: the sellers

Each bar on the right is one price at which sellers are waiting. The bar nearest the middle is the best ask: the lowest price any seller will accept.

The spread

The gap between the best bid and the best ask. Nobody is waiting inside it. Buying at once means paying the ask and selling at once means receiving the bid, so the gap is a cost of trading immediately.

Depth

The back row adds the bars up, from the middle outwards: how much is waiting at this price or better. A book that rises steeply is deep; a shallow one moves further for the same order.

A market order walks the book

A buy order at market takes the nearest asks first. If it is larger than the best ask, it carries on into the next level and the next, at a worse price each time. That difference is slippage.