How to Read Board Information, How to Read and Use It — Memorize the Board Reading to Become a Higher-Ranked Investor! | Episode 1: What is Board Information? [Yohei Onishi]
Yohhei Onishi Profile
Financial journalist. After working at a publishing company, he became independent in 1995 and has contributed articles mainly on finance and economics to money magazines, business magazines, weekly magazines, and other outlets. He has conducted numerous interviews with analysts, strategists at the forefront of the market, and top executives of listed companies. He is well-versed in FX and financial trading in general.
*This article is a reprint/edit of an article from FX Club攻略.com January 2019 issue. Please note that the market information stated in the text may differ from current market conditions.
By reading order book data, you can trade more advantageously
If you look at real-time charts, you can judge timing to buy or sell, but what is shown there is only the price movement of trades that have already been executed. In reality, orders that have not yet been executed are being placed at even more cutting-edge points, and buyers and sellers are in a silent battle beneath the surface.
Order book data is what you can observe in detail about what kind of orders buyers and sellers are placing in front of you. It shows at what price ranges there are how many buy and sell orders, so you can instantly see at what price trades are likely to be executed now.
Because of this, checking the order book data before buying and selling has become common in stock investing. Although there are still some tricky movements, order book data is also used in cryptocurrency trading. In the foreign exchange market, however, a high proportion of over-the-counter trading makes it difficult to provide a complete picture through order book data, but some FX operators disclose individual order statuses.
In any case, if you can accurately grasp the frontline battles, you can place more advantageous trades. Therefore, in this series, from now on I would like to explain how to read and use order book data from the basics. We will also later zoom in on order book data for cryptocurrencies and FX mentioned above, but for now we will focus on stock investment cases.
