One signal. Two components.
Raw volume tells you what already traded. Flow tells you what the book is getting ready to do: liquidity stacking up to defend a level, or quietly pulling away before it breaks.
What you actually get
One signal, two components
Total Flow = Passive Flow + Aggressive Flow, exactly, on every event. Passive is stacks and pulls. Aggressive is the tape delta. Nothing is filtered out.
σ so the number means something
Contracts are meaningless across symbols. Every reading is normalized against its own trailing band, so +4.2σ is the same idea on ES at 2 a.m. and NQ at the open.
It tells you when it does not know
Warming-up and stale states are labelled instead of plotting a plausible-looking garbage series while the band seeds or the feed dies.
Context, not calls
Absorption, initiative, and the ±3σ support/resistance bands are context. Nothing on the panel is financial advice or a trade recommendation.