Dark Levels, Revisits and Level Breaks

Single prints show moments. Dark Levels show places. They mark the prices where off-exchange trading added up over time, and two small marks note what price did there later.

Where Dark volume built up

Every Dark print happens at a price. Over weeks and months, some price zones collect far more Dark dollar volume than others. BigTape adds up the Dark dollars in narrow price bands and marks the heaviest bands as Dark Levels. Exchange prints do not count toward Dark Levels. Only off-exchange dollars do.

A Dark Level is drawn as a pink band across the whole chart. Its tag gives its rank and its total, for example “Dark Level #7 · $22.5B”. That means $22.5 billion of Dark trades happened inside this band since 2016, and only six price zones in this ticker collected more.

Here is how one comes about. Say a stock trades near $131 today. Since 2016, $1.8 billion of Dark trades happened between $128.40 and $128.90. That band becomes a Dark Level with a tag like “Dark Level #42 · $1.80B”, even though price is a few dollars away now.

The band looks the same whether it sits above or below the current price. Its position tells you where trading added up. It does not tell you what price will do there.

Ranks are all-time for this ticker

Ranks are all-time for this ticker, since 2016. Every Dark Level is ranked by its Dark dollars since 2016 against the ticker's other levels, and #1 is the heaviest. Ranks go to 100; smaller levels show without a rank, with a tag like “Dark Level · $1.20B”. Levels update as new Dark trades arrive, so a band can grow and climb the ranks over time.

What the chart draws

A long history holds many levels, so the chart draws only some of them. Of the levels whose price lies in the part of the chart you're looking at, it draws the top five by all-time rank. The Levels control changes that number: Off, Show 3, Show 5, Show 10 or Show 20. Your choice is saved and stays the same when you switch tickers.

Pan or zoom and the choice follows the view. Look at a stretch from years ago, when the stock traded at other prices, and the levels in that price range appear instead, often smaller ones without a rank. Small split panes and phones may draw fewer; when they do, the chart says so.

Levels use only the trades known at the moment you are viewing. In replay, they include Dark trades up to the replay clock and nothing after it.

Revisits

A Revisit is marked when price comes back to a Dark Level. On the chart it is a small tick across the level line. BigTape marks the first Revisit to each ranked level in a session, so a choppy day does not fill the chart with ticks.

Say price trades back into the $128.40 to $128.90 band at 2:15 p.m. after a week away. The chart adds a tick at 2:15 p.m. If price drifts out and back in an hour later, nothing new is drawn until the next session.

Prices wander, so a return to an old zone is ordinary. A Revisit records that price came back. It does not say whether price stopped there, turned or kept going. How often price returns to Dark Levels is the subject of one of BigTape's planned studies.

Level Breaks

A Level Break is marked when price moves clearly through a strong Dark Level on heavy volume. On the chart, the level line gets a short gap with a tick at each end. The details say how heavy the volume was, for example “Price moved through the level on 3× usual volume.” Level Breaks apply only to levels ranked #1 to #20, so crossing a minor band does not count, however busy the day.

The mark looks the same in both directions. The candles show which way price went. A Level Break records that price crossed a heavily traded zone while trading was unusually busy, and nothing more.