How to read Broker flow

Last updated 22 October 2026

A candle tells you where the price went. Broker flow tells you who moved it. Under the chart's minute and hour candles it shows, for every candle, how many shares the day's biggest buying brokers took and how many the biggest selling brokers let go - straight from the NEPSE floorsheet, trade by trade, with the time each trade happened.

1. Turning it on

• Open a stock on the chart and choose a minute or hour timeframe (1m, 5m, 15m, 1h ...). Broker flow needs the time of each trade, so it is not shown on daily candles.
• Press Flow at the top of the chart. A pane opens under the candles; press Flow again, or the × on the pane, to close it.
• Broker flow is part of the paid plans. Trade times are on our floorsheet from 13 October 2026; older days show no bars.

2. Each bar is one candle

The pane has one bar under every candle, covering exactly the same minutes:

• On 1m, each bar is a single minute - the most detail, minute by minute.
• On 5m or 15m, the minutes inside the candle are added together, so a busy stretch of the day stands out.
• On 1h, each bar is an hour - a quick read of how the whole session went.

The legend says which one you are looking at ("each bar = 5 minutes"). A candle with no bar means none of the six brokers traded in those minutes.

3. Up is buying, down is selling

For every trading day we take the floorsheet and find the three brokers who bought the most of the stock (net of what they sold) and the three who sold the most. Then, for each candle:

• Bars above the line (greens) are the shares the day's top three buyers added in that candle.
• Bars below the line (clays) are the shares the day's top three sellers let go.
• The height is the number of shares. The scale on the right shows the biggest bar on screen.

4. The colours are ranks, not fixed brokers

The darkest green is the day's number one buyer, the lighter greens numbers two and three; the same for the clays and the sellers. Because a different broker can be number one tomorrow, the legend follows the cursor: move over a day and it names that day's six brokers, with their total for the day and their average price. Move over a single candle and each broker's share of that bar appears next to its name.

5. The brass line

The brass line is the running total of the six brokers through the day: what the top buyers took minus what the top sellers gave up, added up candle by candle and started again at every open. A line that keeps climbing means the big buyers were absorbing more than the big sellers were releasing; a line that rolls over means the sellers took control.

6. What to look for

• Quiet buying (accumulation). The price is flat or slipping, but green bars keep stacking and the brass line rises. Someone is collecting shares without chasing the price up.
• Selling into strength (distribution). The price is rising, but the tallest bars are clay. Holders are using the rally to get out.
• One broker, every day. The same broker code as the number one buyer day after day is a campaign, not a one-off order.
• The average price. The @ price in the legend is where a big buyer filled. Big buyers often defend their own average, so it can act as a floor.
• Spikes at the open and close. Large bars in the first and last minutes are often orders being set up or squared off - give them less weight than steady flow through the middle of the day.

7. The limits

• A broker trades for many clients. A big net buy shows activity through that broker, not one person's plan.
• Only the six biggest brokers of the day are drawn; the rest of the market's trades are not in the bars.
• Broker flow describes what happened, not what will happen. Read it together with the price, the volume and the company itself, and see the Risk disclosure.