The intuition
Every market is surrounded by resting orders waiting to be filled — and they cluster in obvious places. The naming trips people up because it is from the liquidity taker’s side: "buy-side liquidity" is the liquidity a buyer would hit, which sits above price (the stops of shorts and resting buy stops); "sell-side liquidity" sits below (the stops of longs and resting sell stops). Big players gravitate to these pools because that is where size can actually get filled.
The two pools
Where each pool sits, and what taps it:
- Buy-side liquidity — above price. Short stop-losses + resting buy stops. An up-move that runs the highs is tapping buy-side liquidity, and can reverse down once it is taken.
- Sell-side liquidity — below price. Long stop-losses + resting sell stops. A down-move that runs the lows is tapping sell-side liquidity, and can reverse up.
- The reach is the tell: price often pushes just past a pool, fills against it, and rejects — the long wick that takes liquidity and snaps back is a sweep.
sellRun >= highest(sellRun, 30) && imb >= 20 vyx doesn’t draw "liquidity zones," but it reads the flow that reaches for them: a large same-side taker run (buyRun/sellRun) running a high or low, the cvdHigh/cvdLow spike as the pool is taken, and the book imbalance (imb) behind it. The example flags sellers running the lows into resting demand — a sell-side sweep that may reverse up.
Buy-/sell-side liquidity is a useful map of where resting orders cluster — but not every pool gets swept, and not every sweep reverses. Use it to know where the interesting levels are, then read the actual flow and reaction at the level before acting.
Further reading
Related
FAQ
What is buy-side and sell-side liquidity?
Pools of resting orders a market can trade into. Buy-side liquidity sits above price (short stops + resting buy stops); sell-side liquidity sits below (long stops + resting sell stops). The terms are named from the taker’s side — buy-side is what a buyer would hit.
Is sell-side liquidity above or below price?
Below. Sell-side liquidity is the resting sell orders and long stop-losses beneath price; a move down that runs the lows is tapping it. Buy-side liquidity is the mirror image above price.
How does this relate to liquidity sweeps?
A liquidity sweep is price reaching into one of these pools, filling against it, and often reversing. Buy-/sell-side liquidity tells you where the pools are; the sweep is the event that takes them — and vyx surfaces the sweep’s flow footprint live.
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