About This Manual
This manual describes Dominium v3.4 — what it shows, how its settings work, and how to use it in practice. It covers every user-facing setting in the indicator and explains the underlying order-flow concepts well enough that a trader new to footprint and volume-profile analysis can use it productively, while a veteran can skip directly to the settings reference.
Dominium is structurally larger than its sibling indicator Volumentum. Where Volumentum scans a fixed range of candles and marks individual imbalance ticks, Dominium operates inside a user-drawn rectangle and overlays five distinct elements: detected imbalance zones, a volume profile, optional delta bars, a developing Point-of-Control trail, and an in-rectangle statistics summary. The trader chooses what range of bars and prices to analyze; Dominium does the rest.
The manual is organized in the order most users will need information:
- Sections 2–3 explain what Dominium does and the underlying market-microstructure concepts it relies on.
- Section 4 walks through getting it on a chart and reading the five visual elements.
- Section 5 is the complete settings reference, organized by UI group.
- Section 6 covers the draggable rectangle and its eight interaction handles.
- Sections 7–9 cover practical workflows, common questions, and limitations.
Quick Start
- Apply Dominium to a footprint (cluster) chart in ATAS — a chart type that exposes per-tick bid/ask volumes within each candle.
- On first load, a rectangle appears covering the recent 250 bars at the chart’s price range, with the right edge tracking the live bar. Leave all other settings at default for the first session.
- Move the cursor over the rectangle. The cursor changes shape depending on what part of the rectangle the cursor sits over — the body, an edge, or a corner. Click and drag to reposition or resize.
- Observe the four visual layers Dominium draws inside the rectangle: colored bid/ask imbalance zones at specific tick prices, horizontal volume bars on the right edge, smaller delta bars stacked beside them, and a yellow developing-PoC line stepping through the bars.
- Read the stats line along the top edge of the rectangle: total volume, candle count, tick count, currency mode, and the bid/ask/delta breakdown along the bottom.
- Once you understand the default output, return to Section 5 and tune the imbalance ratio, aggregation, touch count, and unit modes to match your instrument and analysis style.
What Dominium Shows
Dominium is a multi-layer analysis overlay that operates inside a user-drawn rectangle. The rectangle defines the bar range and price range to analyze; every visual element Dominium draws is computed from the footprint data contained within that range.
The Five Layers
Imbalance zones: Colored horizontal rectangles at specific tick prices where one side of the order book overwhelmed the other by a configurable ratio. Bullish zones mark aggressive buying; bearish zones mark aggressive selling. When the live price moves away from a zone in the opposite direction of its aggression, the zone is reclassified as absorption (sellers absorbed by larger buyers, or buyers absorbed by larger sellers) and recolored.
Volume profile: Horizontal bars stacked vertically on the right side of the rectangle, one per price bin. Each bar’s length is proportional to the total volume traded at that bin’s price range across all candles inside the rectangle. The Point-of-Control (the bin with the highest volume) is the longest bar in the profile.
Delta bars: Smaller bars rendered alongside the volume profile, representing the net delta (ask − bid) at each bin. Bars extending right are positive-delta bins (buyer aggression dominated); bars extending left are negative-delta bins. Lets the trader see whether the volume at a level was buyer-driven, seller-driven, or balanced.
Developing PoC: A stepped yellow line inside the rectangle, showing what the Point-of-Control was at each bar as volume accumulated from the rectangle’s left edge to the current bar. Tracks how the volume distribution evolved during the analysis window — flat segments mean the PoC didn’t move; vertical jumps mean a level was overtaken by another with higher cumulative volume.
Stats overlay: A two-line summary anchored to the rectangle’s edges. Top line shows total volume, bar count, tick count, and the currency mode. Bottom line shows bid total, ask total (both with percentage of volume), and net delta with absolute size and percentage.
Optional Splitter Lines
Two horizontal lines can be drawn inside the rectangle to visually anchor key statistics:
- The Volume Splitter marks the price at which total volume above equals total volume below — the rectangle’s median price by volume.
- The Delta Splitter marks either the price where net delta above equals net delta below (Net mode) or the price where absolute delta above equals absolute delta below (Absolute mode). Net mode shows where signed buying and selling balance; Absolute mode shows where total activity above and below balances regardless of direction.
The Volume Splitter is off by default; the Delta Splitter is on by default in Absolute mode. Either can be enabled or disabled from the Splitters group.
Base vs Quote Currency Modes
Every volume number Dominium reports — in the profile, the delta bars, the stats line, and the splitter calculations — can be reported in two units:
- Base Currency: Raw contract or share counts. The number of units that changed hands. For ES futures this is contracts; for stocks it’s shares; for crypto it’s the base asset (e.g., BTC in BTC/USDT).
- Quote Currency: Each price level’s bid and ask volume multiplied by that level’s price, then summed. The total dollar value (or quote-asset value) that changed hands. Captures the economic weight of activity, which can differ meaningfully from raw volume when price spans a wide range within the rectangle.
The currency mode applies uniformly across all reported numbers. The stats line indicates the active mode so the user always knows what units they’re reading.
Order-Flow Concepts You Need
This section is for traders new to footprint and volume-profile analysis. If you already know what bid/ask volume within a candle means, what a Point-of-Control is, and how horizontal volume profiles are read, skip to Section 4.
Bid vs Ask Volume Within a Candle
A standard candle records four prices for the whole bar: open, high, low, close. A footprint candle records something richer: at every price the candle traded, how many contracts hit the bid (sellers were aggressive — they sold into the resting bid) and how many lifted the ask (buyers were aggressive — they bought from the resting ask). Each price level inside a single candle has its own bid and ask volume counts.
This per-level breakdown is the data Dominium reads. The indicator requires a chart type in ATAS that exposes this — typically a cluster chart. Time-based or candle-based charts that don’t decompose volume by price will not produce useful Dominium output.
Volume Profile and the Point-of-Control
A horizontal volume profile flips the usual chart axes for volume: instead of showing volume over time, it shows volume by price. For each price (or bin of prices), the profile draws a horizontal bar whose length is proportional to total volume traded at that price across the analysis range. The result is a histogram laid sideways alongside the chart, showing which price levels saw the most activity.
The longest bar — the price where the most volume traded — is called the Point-of-Control or PoC. It marks the price level that traders most agreed was fair value across the analysis window. Levels with very high volume tend to act as magnets and as future support or resistance; the PoC is the strongest such level by definition.
Dominium’s volume profile is built from the candles inside the rectangle. Bins can be aggregated — a setting of 1 means one bin per tradeable tick (highest resolution, busiest visual); higher numbers merge ticks into wider bins (smoother visual, broader strokes). The PoC is computed at the chosen aggregation.
Delta — Who Was Aggressive at Each Price
Volume alone says how much traded, not which side was aggressive. Delta is the missing piece: at each price, delta = ask volume − bid volume. Positive delta means buyers were aggressive (lifted offers); negative delta means sellers were aggressive (hit bids); near-zero delta means balanced two-sided trade.
Dominium’s delta bars render each bin’s net delta as a small horizontal bar — extending right for positive, left for negative — alongside the volume profile. A price level can have huge volume but near-zero delta (heavy two-sided absorption), or modest volume with extreme delta (one-sided aggression). The combination of profile and delta tells a fuller story than either alone.
Imbalance and Absorption
Imbalance at a price is the raw observation: one side’s aggression overwhelmed the other by a meaningful ratio. The interpretation depends on what happens to price afterward:
- Successful imbalance: Aggressors at that price drove price in their direction. A bullish imbalance whose level holds — price stays above — represents buyers who got what they wanted. The level becomes potential future support.
- Absorption: Aggressors at that price could not move price in their direction. A bullish imbalance where price ultimately drops below the level represents buyers who got eaten — somebody on the offer had enough size to absorb all that aggressive buying and even reverse direction. The level becomes potential future resistance.
Dominium’s absorption flip implements exactly this: when the current live price has moved opposite to a zone’s original aggression direction, the zone is recolored to reflect the absorber, not the failed aggressor. Bullish imbalances overrun by lower prices become bearish absorption; bearish imbalances overrun by higher prices become bullish absorption.
Why Touch Count Matters
A single candle that produces an extreme imbalance at one tick might be a one-time spike — a stop run, a single large order, end-of-session liquidity vacuum. That kind of event leaves a footprint but isn’t necessarily a level worth watching going forward.
A level that sees aggressive imbalance across multiple distinct candles is different: the market repeatedly arrived at that price and one side repeatedly won. That’s a level that has been validated by independent visits, and Dominium’s Minimum Candle Touches setting filters specifically for it. The default is three — a level must have been touched by at least three different candles in the rectangle for it to register.
Touch count combined with the imbalance ratio is what distinguishes a structural level (multiple candles, all showing aggression in the same direction) from coincidental noise (one candle, one outlier print).
Setup and Reading the Output
Installation
Dominium is an ATAS indicator and installs through ATAS’s standard indicator-management workflow. Refer to your platform’s documentation for adding custom indicators.
Chart Type Requirements
Dominium requires per-tick bid/ask volume data inside each candle. In ATAS this typically means using a cluster chart configuration. If you apply Dominium to a chart type that doesn’t provide this data, the rectangle will appear but no zones, profile, or PoC will compute — there’s nothing to read.
First Load Behavior
On first application to a chart, Dominium auto-initializes the rectangle to cover the recent 250 bars at the chart’s actual price range, with the right edge tracking the live bar. Tracking-live means as new bars print, the rectangle’s right edge moves with them — analysis stays current.
From that starting position, the user can drag the rectangle, resize it, or leave it as is. The rectangle’s coordinates are persisted across chart reloads and template applications for the same instrument; switching to a different instrument auto-resets the rectangle, and switching to a different timeframe or chart type within the same instrument snaps the rectangle’s time-based anchors to the nearest available bars on the new chart.
Reading the Five Layers
Imbalance Zones
Colored horizontal rectangles drawn at specific tick prices (or bin price ranges, depending on aggregation). Each zone occupies one bin’s height vertically and the full width of the user’s rectangle horizontally. Color encodes direction and absorption state:
- Bullish imbalance — green by default; aggressive buying at this level, live price is at or above the level.
- Bearish imbalance — magenta by default; aggressive selling, live price at or below.
- Bullish absorption — solid green by default; aggressive selling that was absorbed by buyers — price moved above the level despite the seller aggression. Level acts as potential support.
- Bearish absorption — solid magenta by default; aggressive buying absorbed by sellers — price moved below despite buyer aggression. Level acts as potential resistance.
Each color is independently configurable. Absorption colors default to higher opacity (more visually prominent) than imbalance colors because absorption is typically the more actionable signal.
An optional volume filter, configured at the bottom of the Imbalance Detection group, restricts which detected imbalances actually display. It has four modes — None, Hi-Vol Filtering, Lo-Vol Filtering, Bimodal Filtering — letting the user either hide low-volume imbalances (Hi-Vol: the conventional reading where strong levels matter), hide high-volume imbalances (Lo-Vol: isolate the low-volume rejection-zone candidates the Wyckoff/Steidlmayer tradition treats as the most interesting), or hide only the unremarkable middle while keeping both extremes (Bimodal). None — the default — applies no filtering and shows every detected imbalance.
Volume Profile
Horizontal bars stacked on the right side of the rectangle. The bar at any given price bin’s vertical position has length proportional to total volume traded in that bin across all candles inside the rectangle. The PoC — the longest bar — marks the highest-volume price level. The Max Bar Width (Pixels) setting controls how long the PoC’s bar can be at maximum; all other bars are scaled proportionally.
Volume bars can be hidden via the Show Volume Bars toggle if the user only wants the imbalance zones and delta information.
Delta Bars
Smaller bars rendered to the left of (or overlapping with) the volume bars, representing net delta per bin. Positive-delta bins extend right with the positive-delta color; negative-delta bins extend left with the negative-delta color. Magnitude reflects how strongly imbalanced the bin was — short bars are near-balanced; long bars are one-sided.
Delta bars can be hidden via the Show Delta Bars toggle.
Developing PoC
A stepped horizontal line drawn inside the rectangle, traversing from the rectangle’s left edge to the current bar. At each bar position the line sits at the price that was the PoC of all volume accumulated from the rectangle’s left edge up to that bar. Flat segments indicate the cumulative PoC didn’t change between bars — same level kept winning. Sudden vertical jumps indicate that a different price overtook the previous PoC at that bar.
Useful for seeing how value developed across the analysis window. A PoC that stayed flat at one level across many bars is a strong indication of that level’s importance. A PoC that jumped around suggests the rectangle spans a transition between different value areas.
Stats Overlay
Two text lines anchored to the rectangle’s edges:
- Top line (above the rectangle): “Volume: NNN (X Candles – Y Ticks – Reported in Z Currency)”. The total volume in the active currency mode, followed by metadata: how many candles the rectangle covers, how many tradeable ticks of vertical extent it spans, and whether numbers are in Base or Quote units.
- Bottom line (below the rectangle): “Bids: NNN (X%) Asks: NNN (Y%) Δ: ±NNN (Z%)”. Bid volume and its percentage of total, ask volume and its percentage, and net delta (signed) with its absolute size as a percentage of total volume.
Numbers use K/M/B suffixes for readability: 1234 displays as 1.23K, 1,500,000 as 1.5M, 2,300,000,000 as 2.3B.
Splitter Lines
Two optional horizontal lines visualize median statistics from the rectangle:
- Volume Splitter: Drawn at the price where 50% of volume traded above and 50% below. Off by default; can be enabled in the Splitters group.
- Delta Splitter: Two modes. Net mode draws at the price where cumulative positive delta above equals cumulative negative delta below — the net-zero crossing. Absolute mode draws at the price where total absolute delta above equals total absolute delta below — the activity-weighted midpoint. On by default in Absolute mode.
Splitter colors: the Volume Splitter draws in the Rectangle Border color; the Delta Splitter draws in the color of the delta value in the stats line — green when net delta is positive, magenta when net delta is negative.
Settings Reference
Settings are organized in ATAS’s indicator-properties panel into five groups, presented below in the order they appear. Every setting is described with its purpose, default value, and practical guidance for tuning.
Imbalance Detection
Controls the core scanning logic — what counts as an imbalance and how levels are bucketed.
Pipeline Default: Horizontal (Alternative)
Which imbalance detection method to apply.
Diagonal (Traditional): compare the ask volume at one price against the bid volume at the price one tick below (and the mirror). The conventional cluster-chart definition.
Horizontal (Alternative): compare bid versus ask at the same price.
Dual: run both pipelines simultaneously; detected levels merge before display.
The default is Horizontal because Dominium aggregates across multiple candles per level — and over an aggregated window, the horizontal definition is more stable and more informative than the diagonal one, which is geared toward intra-candle aggression direction.
Imbalance Ratio Default: 2
Minimum ratio between the dominant side and the opposite side at a price level.
At 2, a bullish flag fires when the level’s total ask volume is at least 2× its total bid volume (or the corresponding diagonal comparison in Diagonal mode).
Lower values produce more signals; higher values demand stronger imbalances. Typical range is 2 to 4 depending on instrument liquidity.
Cannot be set below 1 — that would make both directions trigger simultaneously, which has no meaning.
Minimum Candle Touches Default: 3
Minimum number of distinct candles that must have contributed volume to a price bin for its imbalance to be displayed.
1 shows imbalances even when only one candle visited the level (noisy). 3 (default) requires multiple independent validations — a level that several different bars all visited and showed imbalance at. Higher values demand more validation and produce sparser, higher-conviction zones.
This is the setting most users tune first when adapting Dominium to a new instrument. Liquid instruments often handle MinTouchCount of 4 or 5 cleanly; thin instruments may need 2.
Aggregation (Bin Size in Ticks) Default: 1
Number of ticks per bin in both the imbalance detection and the volume profile.
1 means one bin per tradeable tick — highest resolution, every distinct price visible. Higher numbers merge adjacent ticks: 2 means two ticks per bin, 5 means five, and so on.
Increasing aggregation smooths the visual and reduces visual clutter at the cost of less precision. Useful on charts with very fine tick sizes (e.g., crypto pairs trading with eight decimal places). Setting too high collapses meaningful structure — usually 1-5 covers practical use.
Changing aggregation changes what ‘a bin’ means — the volume profile, the developing PoC, and the splitter calculations all rebuild from scratch when this setting changes.
Volume Filter Default: None
Four-mode volume filter applied to detected imbalance bins. Restricts which candidates display based on each bin’s volume relative to the rectangle’s average volume per bin (“ATV” — Average Tick Volume scaled by Aggregation, so the comparison is apples-to-apples against a bin’s total volume).
None: no filtering. Every bin meeting the ratio and touch-count conditions displays regardless of its volume. The default — preserves all detected candidates.
Hi-Vol Filtering: keep only bins whose volume is at or above (multiplier × ATV). High-volume imbalances only — the conventional reading where strong levels matter most. Use to declutter charts when you want to focus on the most participation-heavy levels.
Lo-Vol Filtering: keep only bins whose volume is at or below (ATV ÷ multiplier). Low-volume imbalances only — implements the Wyckoff/Steidlmayer reading of Low Volume Nodes, where unfair-price rejection zones are the levels of interest. Use to isolate exactly the candidates that Hi-Vol mode would discard.
Bimodal Filtering: keep bins from BOTH ends — those at or above (multiplier × ATV) and those at or below (ATV ÷ multiplier). The middle band, where bins have volume close to the rectangle’s average, is dropped. A bin only needs to satisfy one of the two thresholds to display; bins in the middle satisfy neither and are excluded. Use when both extremes carry information and the in-between bins don’t.
Volume is measured in the active currency mode (Base or Quote per the Volume Profile group’s Volume Measured In setting). Threshold and bin volume use the same units, so the comparison is unit-consistent regardless of mode.
Filter Multiplier Default: 1
How aggressively the filter discriminates. Has no effect when Volume Filter is None.
In Hi-Vol mode, the threshold is multiplier × ATV. Higher values raise the bar — only bins with progressively more volume above the rectangle’s average pass.
In Lo-Vol mode, the threshold is ATV ÷ multiplier. Higher values push the bar lower — only bins with progressively less volume below the rectangle’s average pass.
In Bimodal mode, both thresholds apply simultaneously. Higher multiplier values widen the exclusion zone around the average, making both kept bands stricter and shrinking the total set of bins that pass.
At multiplier 1, all thresholds collapse to ATV itself: Hi-Vol keeps bins ≥ ATV, Lo-Vol keeps bins ≤ ATV, and Bimodal’s middle band has zero width so every bin passes.
Minimum 1. Lower values would invert the filter’s logic and have no useful interpretation.
Volume Profile
Controls the appearance and units of the volume profile and developing-PoC overlays.
Volume Measured In Default: Quote Currency
Whether all reported volumes — in the profile, delta bars, stats line, splitters, and PoC computations — are measured in base or quote units.
Base Currency: raw contract or share counts. What changed hands in units of the traded asset.
Quote Currency: each tick’s bid and ask volume multiplied by that tick’s price, then summed. The total dollar (or quote-asset) value that changed hands. Reflects the economic weight of activity.
On instruments where the rectangle spans a wide price range, base and quote can paint meaningfully different PoCs and splitter prices — quote weights higher prices more heavily because each contract is worth more dollars there.
Show Volume Bars Default: On
Master toggle for the horizontal volume profile bars on the right side of the rectangle. Off hides them entirely.
Show Delta Bars Default: On
Master toggle for the per-bin delta bars rendered alongside the volume profile. Off hides them entirely. Volume bars and delta bars are independent — either can be shown without the other.
Max Bar Width (Pixels) Default: 250
Maximum width in pixels for the longest volume bar (the PoC). All other bars are scaled proportionally to this maximum.
Increase for more prominent profile visualization; decrease to keep the profile compact when the rectangle is narrow. Has no effect on the underlying math — purely cosmetic.
Show Developing PoC Default: On
Toggle for the developing Point-of-Control line that traces across the rectangle showing where the PoC sat as volume accumulated from the rectangle’s left edge to each bar.
Off hides the line entirely. Useful when the profile and zones are providing enough information and the developing line adds visual clutter rather than insight.
Splitters
Optional horizontal lines drawn inside the rectangle that mark volume-median or delta-balance prices.
Volume Splitter Default: None
None: no volume splitter line drawn.
Total: draw a horizontal line at the price where 50% of total volume traded above and 50% below. The rectangle’s volume median.
Color matches the Rectangle Border color.
Delta Splitter Default: Absolute
None: no delta splitter line drawn.
Net: line at the price where cumulative positive delta above equals cumulative negative delta below — the net-zero crossing.
Absolute: line at the price where total absolute delta above equals total absolute delta below — the activity midpoint regardless of direction.
Color matches the delta value’s color in the stats line — positive-delta color when net delta is positive, negative-delta color when net delta is negative.
Net mode answers ‘where does signed buying-versus-selling balance.’ Absolute mode answers ‘where does total activity balance, irrespective of who was aggressive.’ They often disagree, and the disagreement is itself informative.
Colors
Visual encoding for every layer Dominium renders.
Bullish Imbalance Default: Green (low opacity)
Color for raw bullish imbalances — buyers were aggressive at this level and price hasn’t moved against them.
Bearish Imbalance Default: Magenta (low opacity)
Color for raw bearish imbalances — sellers were aggressive and price hasn’t moved against them.
Absorption Color Flip Default: Off
Master toggle for absorption reclassification.
On: zones where the current live price has moved opposite to the zone’s original aggression direction are recolored with the absorption palette.
Off: all detected zones display with the imbalance palette regardless of where live price sits.
Bullish Absorption Default: Green (high opacity)
Color for bullish absorption — sellers were aggressive at this level but a larger buyer absorbed them and price moved up. Rendered more opaque than plain imbalance because absorption is typically more actionable.
Bearish Absorption Default: Magenta (high opacity)
Color for bearish absorption — buyers were aggressive but a larger seller absorbed them and price moved down.
Rectangle Border Default: Yellow
Color for the rectangle’s border outline and for the Volume Splitter line. Also used for the stats line’s top section (Volume label and metadata).
Choose a color that contrasts cleanly with your chart background — the border is the primary visual anchor for the rectangle.
Volume Bar Color Default: Cyan
Fill color for the horizontal volume profile bars.
Delta Bar Color (+) Default: Green
Color for positive-delta bins in the delta bars and for the Ask label/value in the stats line.
Delta Bar Color (-) Default: Magenta
Color for negative-delta bins in the delta bars and for the Bid label/value in the stats line.
Font
Typography for the stats line.
Name Default: Roboto
Font family name for the stats line.
If the named font isn’t installed on the system, GDI+ falls back to a default font automatically — the indicator will still render, just in a different typeface. Common safe choices: Arial, Segoe UI, Roboto, Calibri.
Size Default: 11
Font size in points for the stats line.
Increase for greater readability at the cost of more chart real estate. Decrease for a more compact overlay.
The Rectangle
Dominium’s central interactive element is the analysis rectangle. Its bar range and price range define what the indicator scans; everything else — zones, profile, delta, PoC, splitters, stats — recomputes when the rectangle moves.
Why It Exists
Volume-profile analysis and footprint-based level detection both require a defined analysis window. A profile of “the whole chart” is meaningless; the trader has to choose which range matters. Dominium puts that choice in the trader’s hands and shows it visually: the rectangle is the chosen window, and the trader can move or resize it at any time to refocus.
The Eight Handles
The rectangle responds to mouse interaction in eight different zones. Hover over each to see the cursor change:
- Body: Anywhere inside the rectangle that’s not near an edge or corner. Cursor shows the move-all-directions arrow. Click and drag to translate the entire rectangle — its bar range and price range both shift together.
- Top edge / Bottom edge: Within a few pixels of the top or bottom border. Cursor shows vertical-resize. Drag to expand or contract the rectangle’s price range from that edge. The opposite edge stays fixed.
- Left edge / Right edge: Within a few pixels of the left or right border. Cursor shows horizontal-resize. Drag to expand or contract the rectangle’s bar range from that edge. The opposite edge stays fixed.
- The four corners: Top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right. Each within a few pixels of where two edges meet. Cursor shows the move-all-directions arrow (intentional — drag a corner to resize in two dimensions simultaneously). Drag to move both adjacent edges; the opposite corner stays fixed.
Live-Edge Tracking
When the rectangle’s right edge sits exactly at the live bar, the rectangle is in tracking-live mode. As each new bar prints, the right edge advances automatically to stay anchored to the live bar — analysis stays current without manual intervention. Dragging the right edge away from the live bar disables tracking; dragging it back to the live bar re-enables tracking automatically. The state is persisted, so a chart that was tracking-live when saved will resume tracking on reload.
Persistence and Cross-Chart Behavior
The rectangle’s position is saved with the chart and survives reloads. Position is stored as absolute prices (for the top and bottom edges) and as bar timestamps (for the left and right edges).
- On reload of the same chart: timestamps and prices match — rectangle restored exactly where you left it.
- On the same instrument, different timeframe or chart type: timestamps snap to the nearest available bars on the new chart, prices used as-is. The rectangle covers the same wall-clock time period at the same price range, regardless of how that range is bucketed into bars.
- On a different instrument: saved coordinates are meaningless on the new instrument’s price scale, so Dominium resets the rectangle to the new chart’s default — the recent 250 bars at the chart’s price range, tracking live. The trader can then drag it to the desired analysis window.
Practical Workflow
First Session With a New Instrument
Leave all settings at default for the first session and observe the output through a meaningful range — at least one full session. Defaults are conservative and produce readable output on most major futures, equities, and high-liquidity crypto pairs without modification.
After observing, evaluate the output by these criteria:
- Too few zones overall — lower the Imbalance Ratio to 1.5, or reduce Minimum Candle Touches from 3 to 2.
- Too many zones, hard to distinguish levels — raise the Imbalance Ratio to 2.5 or 3, raise Minimum Candle Touches to 4 or 5.
- Volume profile too coarse, not enough detail — leave Aggregation at 1 (the default).
- Volume profile too granular, fragmented across single-tick noise — increase Aggregation to 2 or 3 to merge adjacent ticks.
- Quote-mode numbers feel disconnected from what the trader cares about — switch Volume Measured In to Base Currency for raw contract counts. Use Quote on instruments where price levels span enough that economic weight differs meaningfully from raw count.
- Imbalances appearing at thinly-traded levels that don’t feel meaningful — set Volume Filter to Hi-Vol Filtering (Imbalance Detection group) and tune Filter Multiplier to suppress bins below a multiple of the rectangle’s average. Conversely, if you specifically want to study low-volume rejection-zone candidates that Hi-Vol mode would hide, set Volume Filter to Lo-Vol Filtering — same multiplier, opposite side of the average. Bimodal Filtering keeps both ends at once and drops only the unremarkable middle. Default is None: every detected imbalance displays.
Sizing the Rectangle
The rectangle’s size has direct consequences for what Dominium shows. Sizing guidance:
- Too narrow (few bars) — touch count rarely qualifies; few or no zones display. The profile is also thin and may not reveal stable structure. If using the indicator for current-session analysis, expand left to include enough recent context.
- Too wide (many bars) — every price bin sees many touches, so almost every level qualifies; the chart fills with zones. The profile becomes the average across the whole range, which may not reflect current state. Tighten left until the picture matches the analysis horizon.
- Sensible range — typically 100-500 bars covering a meaningful analysis window: one full session for intraday work, several days for swing work, several weeks for position analysis. Adjust to your style.
Reading the Profile-Zones-PoC Triple
Each layer adds different information; together they triangulate where the chart’s real structure sits:
- Volume profile shows where price spent time — the long bars are levels traders kept returning to.
- Imbalance zones show where aggression occurred — the colored zones at specific prices are where buyers or sellers pressed hard.
- Developing PoC shows how value evolved — whether the volume distribution settled around one level or migrated as time progressed.
When all three agree — long profile bar, imbalance zones clustered there, developing PoC parked there — that’s a strongly validated level. When they disagree — long profile bar but no zones, or zones with no profile support — the level is less clear-cut and may not act as expected.
Combining With Other Tools
Dominium identifies and characterizes levels of interest within the chosen analysis window. It does not predict direction or generate signals. Practical use typically combines Dominium with one or more of:
- Higher-timeframe market structure analysis — swing highs/lows, trend lines, key session levels — to provide directional context.
- Time-based context — what session is active, what news is scheduled, where the day’s open and prior settlement sit — to interpret zones in their economic context.
- Volumentum or similar per-candle imbalance scanners for short-term confirmation that aggression is occurring as price approaches a Dominium-identified level.
Dominium is most useful as a structural analysis layer: telling the trader where in the chart real participation has built up. The trade decision — when, why, and in what direction — comes from elsewhere.
Troubleshooting and FAQ
The rectangle is there but nothing else displays
The chart probably doesn’t expose per-tick bid/ask volumes. Dominium requires a cluster or footprint chart configuration. Check that your chart type is one that ATAS treats as cluster-compatible. If footprint numbers are visible inside your candles, the data is present.
Also possible: Minimum Candle Touches is set higher than any level in the rectangle has been touched. Lower it temporarily to confirm whether anything qualifies.
Too many zones — the chart is cluttered
Raise Imbalance Ratio (try 2.5 or 3.0). Raise Minimum Candle Touches (try 4 or 5). Increase Aggregation (try 2 or 3) to merge adjacent levels into wider bins.
Too few zones — almost nothing displays
Lower Imbalance Ratio (try 1.5). Lower Minimum Candle Touches (try 2). Check that the rectangle isn’t so narrow that few bins have been touched enough times to qualify.
Volume profile and delta bars overlap awkwardly
Reduce Max Bar Width (Pixels) to keep the profile narrower, leaving more room. Or disable one of the two — Show Volume Bars or Show Delta Bars — if both at once is too visually busy.
The developing PoC line jumps around as I change Aggregation
Expected behavior. The PoC is whichever bin has the highest cumulative volume — and changing aggregation changes what “a bin” means. A different bin layout produces a different PoC. This is the math working correctly, not a bug. Pick the aggregation that matches your analysis horizon and stay there.
Base mode and Quote mode show different PoCs
Also expected. Base PoC is the bin with the highest raw contract count. Quote PoC is the bin with the highest economic value traded — which weighs higher-priced bins more heavily because each contract there is worth more dollars. On instruments where the rectangle spans a wide price range, the two can disagree by several bins. Both are correct under their respective definitions. Pick the one that matches the question being asked.
Colors look wrong — bullish zones appear bearish-colored
Absorption reclassification is doing what it’s supposed to: a bullish imbalance whose level the live price has dropped through becomes bearish absorption. If you want to see raw imbalance detection without this flip, turn off Absorption Color Flip in the Colors group.
After applying a template to a fresh chart, the rectangle is in the wrong place
Templates carry rectangle coordinates, and those coordinates may not match the new chart’s data. Dominium handles this automatically by resetting the rectangle to defaults when the saved instrument doesn’t match the current chart’s instrument. If the rectangle landed off-screen on a same-instrument-different-timeframe switch, the time-snap should have placed it on equivalent bars — drag it to wherever you actually want it for the new chart.
The stats line says “Reported in Quote Currency” but the numbers look like contracts
The mode controls how Dominium combines per-tick data internally; on instruments where prices are near 1.0 (some forex pairs, low-priced crypto), Quote and Base numbers can look numerically similar. Check the indicator settings to confirm which mode is active — the stats line text always reflects the actual mode.
Dominium is slow when I change settings
Several settings — Aggregation, Imbalance Ratio, Minimum Candle Touches, Pipeline — trigger a full recalculation across the entire rectangle’s bar range. On large rectangles spanning thousands of bars on cluster-dense charts, this can take a moment. Once the recalculation completes, the indicator settles back to live-tick performance.
Limitations and Design Notes
What Dominium Does Not Do
- It does not generate buy or sell signals. It characterizes the structure inside the chosen analysis window; trade decisions are the trader’s job.
- It does not aggregate across timeframes. The analysis covers exactly the bars inside the rectangle on the chart’s current timeframe. To see how levels look on a different timeframe, switch the chart’s timeframe — Dominium will snap to equivalent bars.
- It does not look forward. All numbers are computed from data already in the rectangle. The live bar updates tick by tick as new data arrives; closed bars are finalized.
- It does not weight zones by recency or anchor distance. Every zone meeting the configured filters is displayed equally; visual prominence comes from color choice and from whether the zone is in imbalance or absorption state.
Rectangle-Bound Analysis
Every layer Dominium draws is bounded by the rectangle. A zone outside the rectangle does not display; a profile bar outside the rectangle does not display; the PoC line stops at the rectangle’s edges. This is deliberate — the rectangle is the analysis contract. The trader chooses the window, Dominium analyzes that window.
Consequence: when the rectangle is moved or resized, everything recomputes. The same level may show as a strong zone in one rectangle and not register at all in another, depending on which other bars are in the analysis.
Why Live-Tick Updates Recompute Fully
Each new tick of the live bar can change bid/ask volumes at one or more price levels, which can change whether a level qualifies as imbalanced, can change the volume profile shape, can change the PoC, can change the delta totals, and can change splitter prices. Rather than maintaining incremental state for each layer independently, Dominium recomputes affected layers as needed when ticks arrive. This is invisible in normal use; on extremely large rectangles or extremely tick-dense bars, it may cause noticeable per-tick computational load.
Why Defaults Are Conservative
The default Imbalance Ratio of 2 and Minimum Candle Touches of 3 are conservative deliberately. They were chosen to produce readable output on liquid instruments during normal sessions without generating dozens of zones per chart. Most users will find these defaults too strict for thin sessions and too loose for the heaviest liquidity events. Tune both based on what your instrument and session normally produce — and don’t be afraid to keep different settings saved as templates for different market conditions.
Closing Note
Dominium gives the trader precise visibility into a chosen analysis window: where volume concentrated, where aggression occurred, where value developed, and how the participation balanced. It does not say what to trade or when. Used well, it adds a layer of analytical resolution to chart reading that’s invisible without it — making it possible to see, with specificity, why a level was important and what was happening as price approached or rejected it.