Single print

What it is

A single print is a price level inside a footprint chart where volume traded on only one side of the spread — bid-only or ask-only — leaving the other side at zero. The price was touched, trades happened, but the auction was strictly one-directional at that exact level.

The footprint cell signature is unambiguous: a price row showing, for example, 800 contracts on the ask and 0 contracts on the bid (or the inverse). No one was willing to passively take the other side at that price, so the level got swept without a real two-sided auction.

Single prints exist because of how price discovery accelerates through illiquid levels. When the market moves quickly through a price — typically on a breakout, stop run, or news spike — it can leave behind levels where one side never engaged. Those levels become untested in the order flow sense.

Why it matters

Markets tend to revisit untested prices. The reasoning isn't mystical: at any single print, there's a known absence of completed two-sided auction. Some traders interpret that as inventory that wasn't filled, others as unfinished business between buyers and sellers. Either way, single prints are commonly observed magnet levels.

Practical uses:

• Mark single prints from prior sessions and watch how price reacts when it returns to them.
• Use intraday single prints as targets or as expected reaction zones.
• Recognise that a session with many single prints was likely driven by aggressive directional flow, not balanced rotation — context for tomorrow.

How traders use it on Sierra Chart

Sierra Chart traders identify single prints directly from Numbers Bars footprint cells, where the zero-volume side is visible at a glance. Some annotate them manually with horizontal rays; others use studies that auto-detect and draw the levels.

The most actionable single prints tend to be those formed in the cash session (RTH) on liquid futures, especially when the print appears at a structural level — a value area edge, a prior POC, a session high or low. Overnight single prints in thin liquidity carry less informational weight.

Common patterns / pitfalls

• Not every single print gets revisited. They're a probability tilt, not a guarantee.
• Multiple stacked single prints (a single print column) carry more weight than isolated ones — they signal a fast, unauctioned move through a wider zone.
• Single prints inside a tight range are often noise; the ones that matter are at the edges of moves.
• An RTH single print left open into the next session is the canonical "magnet" setup — but its expiry is fuzzy. Some traders give them weeks, others only a few sessions.
• Be careful with single prints on instruments where tick-data quality is suspect. A "single print" on a thin or reconstructed feed may just be missing prints, not real one-sided liquidity.

Related SCS studies

Single Print and Gap auto-detects single-print levels as they form and tracks them across sessions, including marking them invalidated once price revisits. Zero Print Zones provides a complementary view focused on persistent zero-volume regions.