Unfinished Auction
An “unfinished auction”, sometimes called “unfinished business”, is the term used to describe when the extreme price for a bar (either high, low, or both) has both buy AND sell volume. This pattern is only visible on a Footprint chart because you can “see inside the bar”, allowing you to see things everyone else misses.
An unfinished auction that occurs on the high tick looks like the example below. Notice there is both bid and ask volume at the extreme (high price).
So while at each price there is a battle between buyers and sellers, the unfinished auction pattern shows that buyers want to take price higher but are being challenged by sellers. We have found this pattern creates a huge target for the market to retest usually within 30 minutes. Whether it happens immediately or not, price tends to come back and test or trade through where the unfinished auction pattern occurred. That’s why we call this Footprint pattern an unfinished auction.
Completed Auction
A “completed auction” is when the unfinished auction has been satisfied. It is satisfied when the price of the unfinished auction trades again. So the expectation is for price to return to the price level of the unfinished auction. This typically seems to occur within 30 minutes. The first example below took exactly 30 minutes to “complete”.
