Transaction analysis
Price tells you what happened. The transaction tab tells you who was behind it, and whether large, patient money was building or shedding a position, often before the chart reacts. These are the reads institutions have always had and retail rarely sees. Here is how to read each one.
CADI, the smart-money flow line
Every day, CADI ranks all the brokers by how much money they moved net, takes the top ten, and adds their net direction to a running total. It is weighted by money rather than lot count, and wash trades are stripped out, so it is the cleanest read we have on whether large money is accumulating.
The shape is what matters. A line that keeps climbing while price sits flat or drifts down is the classic footprint of quiet accumulation: someone is building a position the chart has not caught up to yet. It is like watching the tide quietly come in while the surface still looks calm. In our testing, stocks in the top band of CADI were about 1.3 times more likely to make a large up-move over the next month than an average stock, a real if modest edge, strongest on small and mid caps.
CADI
cumulative broker-flow index
Price against flow
The clearest way to use CADI is right next to price. Both lines are scaled to their own range so you compare their shape, not their level. When the flow line climbs faster than price, big money is building a position the chart has not priced in yet. When flow falls while price rises, the rally is not backed by the heavyweights, and it is on thinner ice than it looks.
MDKA price vs flow
79 sessions · normalized
Both lines are scaled to their own range, so you read shape, not levels. On MDKA the two largely track: they climbed into the early peak and eased back together, which is the aligned state the Divergence card reports. The gap to watch for is when the cyan flow line keeps climbing while price lags, accumulation the chart has not priced yet.
VWAP fair value
VWAP is the price the average share actually changed hands at over a window. It is the benchmark institutions are literally graded on, so it means something real. The band tells you whether today's price sits at a discount, at fair value, or at a premium, and it is scaled by the stock's own volatility so "cheap" means the same thing on a sleepy blue-chip and a jumpy small-cap.
Read it as context, not a trigger. We tested VWAP position as a return predictor and it was actually slightly contrarian: the cheapest names did a little worse, not better. So a discount is only a better entry zone once the flow and structure already agree. It is never a buy signal on its own.
VWAP fair value
GVPR and concentration
GVPR measures how concentrated a single day's trading was. A high reading means a handful of brokers did most of the volume, the fingerprint of institutional activity; a low one means many small participants, which is noisier. It squares each broker's share, so one whale counts far more than fifty minnows. It is a concentration index, not a top-five share, despite older copy that said so.
Concentration asymmetry goes one step further and asks whether the buying is tighter than the selling. When a few large hands do the buying while selling is scattered across a crowd, that is the signature of one side quietly accumulating. Neither of these predicts price on its own, so read them as colour: they tell you the character of the flow, institutional versus retail, and they matter most in the extremes.
GVPR (gross volume participation)
Concentration asymmetry
Low buy dispersion + high sell dispersion = institutional accumulation signal.
Divergence detection
When price and flow disagree, that gap is often an early warning. The most useful case is price making lower lows while CADI makes higher lows: the price is falling, but large money is quietly buying the dip, and the chart has not caught up. The card flags it when it appears and tells you plainly when price and flow are aligned.
A fresh bullish divergence on a name you are watching is a reason to look closer, not to front-run. Wait for a constructive Wyckoff phase or a rising CADI to confirm before you act, because a divergence is a probability, not a certainty, and it can persist for a while before price responds.
Divergence detection
How to combine it
CADI rising while price is flat is the highest-value read here: accumulation the chart has not priced yet. Watch for the breakout, and confirm it with structure before you act.
Confirm the character with concentration and GVPR. Concentrated, institutional-looking buying is worth more than scattered retail flow.
Use VWAP for the entry, not the decision. A discount is a better price on a name you already like for a flow reason, not a reason to buy by itself.
VWAP fair value is context, not a trigger. On current data it does not predict forward returns on its own, so never buy a stock just because it looks cheap.
Concentration and GVPR only matter in the tails. Near balanced, they are silent, and reading anything into the middle is a mistake.
Broker codes are desks, not owners. One desk can route trades for many clients, so read the flow as pressure and conviction, never as a named institution's portfolio.