medium · Order Flow Analysis absorption-exhaustion-imbalance

Why is 'absorption,' not 'exhaustion,' the more precise read of this single bar's footprint?

1. Because the sell-dominant delta proves aggressive sellers were still pressing into the low; the held price means a passive bid resting under the offer consumed all that selling, which is absorption — exhaustion would instead show aggressive selling drying up (delta shrinking toward zero) at the low.
2. Because exhaustion only ever applies to up moves into swing highs and never to down moves into lows; at a low the correct technical term is always 'capitulation,' which by definition involves passive buyers stepping aside and refusing to absorb rather than actively soaking up the incoming sell supply
3. Because the heaviest volume of the entire session can only ever represent institutional distribution, so the held low must actually be an unconfirmed bull trap that the next two bars have not yet invalidated, despite the bid-dominant delta reading printed across every price in the bar
4. Because a 3:1 bid-to-ask ratio is, by long-standing trading-desk convention, always a definitive stacked-imbalance signal of initiative buying regardless of context, so the bar is neither absorption nor exhaustion but instead an initiative-buy thrust that has simply been mislabeled by its negative delta reading

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