Bookmap Review – What Makes This Charting Platform Unique?

About Bookmap

Bookmap is a unique charting platform designed to help day traders visualize order flow data and liquidity for stocks, futures, and cryptocurrencies. The platform offers a highly customizable interface that maps order book data onto a heatmap and price chart. Plus, Bookmap supports chart trading for ultra-fast order execution. Getting used to Bookmap can take some time and practice, but the platform is well-designed and makes order book data more actionable for active traders. 

How Much Does Bookmap Cost?

Bookmap offers three pricing tiers: Digital, Global, and Global Plus. It’s important to note that Bookmap does not include exchange data – you will need to pay for your own data feed and connect it to the software in order to access most features.

The Digital tier is free, but only allows you to connect real-time cryptocurrency exchange data. Equity and futures data feeds are delayed by 24 hours. In addition, you miss out on some of the platform’s more advanced features like VWAP and large order tracking. If you want to add market replay to the free version of the platform, it costs $20 per month.

A Global subscription costs $39 per month (paid annually, otherwise $49 per month) and allows you to connect real-time equity and futures data. It also includes market replay. However, the Global plan still doesn’t offer volume tracking features, and you cannot trade stocks or futures from Bookmap.

To unlock full access to Bookmap, you’ll need a Global Plus subscription for $79 per month (paid annually, otherwise $99 per month).

What Can You Do With Bookmap?

Order Book Visualization

Bookmap is designed to offer real-time visualization of Level 2 market data. The platform transforms traditional price charts to enable you to see how liquidity and price interact.

Bookmap’s layout centers around a technical chart that updates at up to 40 frames per second. The chart displays order book data using a heatmap and volume bubbles. The heatmap aligns with an order book and shows current order volume at discrete price levels. Red bars indicate large orders, which can often serve as support or resistance levels, while blue bars indicate relatively low liquidity at a specific price level. Volume bubbles appear on the chart to show current transactions and the relative volume of trade sizes.

This style of data visualization is extremely helpful because it highlights liquidity levels. For example, red heatmap bars, which indicate accumulated bid or ask orders in the order book for an asset, often represent support or resistance levels.

Volume Alerts

Bookmap also has several features for alerting traders to unusual volume activity in the order book. For example, the platform has a voice alert system that will automatically call out large orders along with their price and volume when they are entered into the order book for an asset. You can customize what defines a large order, either by discrete volume or relative to average trading volume. Bookmap will also highlight volume imbalances between bid and ask orders as they develop in the order book.

In addition, Bookmap includes a number of key volume-related indicators used by day traders. For example, you can overlay VWAP onto the charts and track the size of the largest-volume order at any price level to help spot so-called iceberg orders.

Chart Trading

If you connect Bookmap to your brokerage account, you can take advantage of chart trading inside the platform. This enables you to enter orders simply by clicking on a price level on the chart using the heatmap or by clicking on a price level inside the depth-of-market display. There are several shortcuts to speed up trade execution, and Bookmap will automatically track profit and loss for open trades. 

Replay Mode

Bookmap allows you to record market data and play it back later at higher or lower speeds for analysis. Helpfully, when replaying market data, you still have access to all of Bookmap’s tools for monitoring volume. That allows you to dive deeper into price during re-analysis.

Another benefit to replay mode is that it allows you to simulate chart trading on historical data. This can be very helpful for trying out a strategy. Plus, you can speed up the market feed after placing an order to quickly see how your trade plays out.   

Compatible Brokerages And Data Feeds

Bookmap does not include a data feed, so you’ll need to purchase data from another source to use with this program. For equities trading, Bookmap currently only supports data from dxFeed. For futures trading, you can connect data feeds from 12 different providers, including dxFeed, NinjaTrader, Rithmic, and iQFeed. For crypto trading, data from most major exchanges is supported.

Any supported data platform that also offers brokerage services for futures or crypto trading can be used for chart trading with Bookmap. For stock trading, data must come from dxFeed, but orders can be routed to TradeStation or Interactive Brokers accounts (Bookmap notes that TD Ameritrade will soon be supported as well).

How Does Bookmap Compare To Other Platforms?

Bookmap is very unique in the way that it presents order book data. The visualizations are excellent, allowing active traders to easily see how large orders can impact liquidity and price throughout the day. The heatmap is especially nice, since it provides a clear look at what orders are waiting to be triggered above or below the current price action.

While Bookmap can be somewhat tricky to use at first, the platform is well laid-out, and the learning curve isn’t overly steep. Having access to the market replay feature is particularly good, as it allows you to practice building a strategy around volume visualizations within Bookmap. 

Is Bookmap Right For You?

Bookmap is designed for stock, futures, and cryptocurrency day traders. With a refresh rate of up to 40 frames per second, the software is best for high-frequency traders who can profit off of changes in liquidity at different price levels. However, it can also be useful for lower-frequency day traders who want to use order book data to identify intraday support and resistance levels.

Bookmap can be pricey for stock and futures trading when you consider that chart trading requires a Global Plus subscription as well as an external data feed. However, it is largely free for cryptocurrency trading, which makes it particularly suitable for use by crypto day traders.