I had never heard the term before so I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something One thing I find useful is a delta footprint chart; it can show you imbalance more effectively than a regular Bid/Ask footprint or trying to "read the tape".
In my opinion (which I am confident someone here will tell me is flawed ) depth is only useful close to the trading price. It is helpful to see limit orders being pulled close to price but if you are looking at 10 ticks away from price it isn't meaningful UNLESS they stick around to be traded. I am a short term trader so the only thing I look at on level 2 is who is pulling contracts and who is adding. In a perfect world you want to see buyers pulling bids and sellers adding to the offer when short. It isn't always clear however with enough screen time you get a feel for it. Can it be "taught"? No. What kind of indicator do you think might be useful on depth? How many levels would you include? What time frame? In my opinion you ought to look at what was traded rather than what "might" have been traded. Look at it as an auction; people get stuck.
Thank you Wartrace for your input. So to understand, you would find more valuable to look at the past behaviors of big players and correlate that with the price and see what short term trade can you make when the price is at a critical level. Correct me if i am wrong but that is what i think you said. If so, i am under the same impression, as i am curious to see exactly the same thing, past behaviors of as much as i can see on the market, if there are no names at least to match some order placing to some entities and see how that is affecting the price. I is already agreed and reconfirmed by London financial people that this is the tech that funds have and we could create one also, maybe we will, but i would like to see the opinion of others, what they believe will happen if that information would be accessible to everyone, of course, for a certain subscription, but that is not the point. What would happen if people would take that info as the new norm for technical analysis, just like an evolution based on technology.
If you can't read the chart, I doubt you can accurately read the DOM or BookMap. Just my useless 2-cents.