Money Flow is TradeMade's featured indicator, built in-house. The Money Flow grid on the dashboard reads twelve markets against their own normal moves and turns them into one risk-on / risk-off call. The Money Flow Visualizer draws the same live read as money actually moving.
What you are looking at
The US dollar sits in the middle, with the other eleven markets around it. When an asset rises, money streams out of the dollar into it. When it falls, money streams out of it back into the dollar. Faster, thicker, brighter streams mean a bigger move against that asset's normal size. In the 30-minute view they also mean busier trading than usual for that time of day. The list under the map gives the same streams in words, strongest first.
What counts as a normal move
- Last 24 hr (the page opens on this): each asset's 24-hour move is compared with its typical 24-hour move over the last two weeks.
- Last 30 min: its 30-minute move against its typical 30-minute move over the last three days.
- A move smaller than about a third of normal is yellow: just the usual wiggle, drawn as a thin, dim stream. Because each asset is judged against its own normal, 0.3% can be a big move for the euro and nothing for Bitcoin.
- Every % on the map is the move over the window you picked, not the day's change your charting platform shows.
Two colour schemes: the Colours switch
Both schemes show the same streams; only the colours change, and the page remembers your pick. Grey always means closed or no reading.
- Direction (the default) answers where is the money going? Green is money going into an asset, red is money going out of it, yellow is moving inside its normal range.
- Risk on / off answers what does this move mean for risk? Every ring and stream wears the same colour as the dashboard's Money Flow grid: green helps risk-on, red helps risk-off, yellow is going nowhere.
Direction: what "into" means for each asset
- Nasdaq, oil, gold, Bitcoin, long bonds (TLT): price up means money in, so green. Down means red.
- Euro: EUR/USD up is a green euro. Down means euros turning into dollars, so a red euro.
- Yen: drawn as the yen, not USD/JPY, so it reads opposite to the usual chart. USD/JPY falling is a green yen, and rising is a red yen.
- Aussie dollar: measured against the yen (AUD/JPY), so its stream runs between the yen and the Aussie, not through the middle.
- 2-year and 10-year notes: drawn as the notes, not the yield. A falling yield means notes are being bought, so green. The % is the notes' price move.
- VIX: rising means money into protection, so green. Here green does not mean good for stocks.
- The dollar: its ring is the Dollar Index, green when it is up. Money can pass through the dollar on its way between assets without the index moving much, so read the streams around it, not only its colour.
Risk on / off: which moves count as risk-on
- Nasdaq, Bitcoin, euro, Aussie dollar: rising is green, falling is red.
- Yen: a weakening yen (USD/JPY up) is green. A strengthening yen is red, because money buys yen when it is scared.
- Oil, VIX and Treasury yields: rising is red. Falling is green.
- Gold: rising is normally green, since it usually comes with a weaker dollar that also lifts Nasdaq. On a day the headlines call risk-off, rising gold turns red: that is the safe-haven bid.
- Long bonds (TLT): rising is normally green, but red when headlines are risk-off or mixed and Nasdaq is falling, because that is money leaving stocks for safety.
- Bitcoin is yellow when it rises with gold while Nasdaq is sold: a haven bid, not risk appetite.
- The dollar: red when it is moving hard either way, green when it is quiet.
Why the two schemes can disagree, and which to use. Direction shows where the money is going. Risk on / off shows what that means for your risk read, in the dashboard grid's own colours. Rising oil is green in Direction, because money is going into oil, and red in Risk on / off, because rising oil works against risk appetite. Both are right; they answer different questions.
A worked example
Nasdaq is falling, so a red stream runs out of Nasdaq and into the dollar in the middle. At the same time, green streams run out of the dollar into gold and oil. Read together, that is money leaving stocks and moving into gold and oil: a risk-off move, and a good environment for gold and oil. The dollar's own ring can be any colour here. Money can pass through the dollar on its way from one asset to another without the Dollar Index itself moving much, so in a picture like this, look at where the streams start and end, not at the colour of the middle.
Where the data comes from
Prices are the dashboard's own live feeds. Trading activity comes from free volume data: fund volume for Nasdaq, gold and oil during stock-market hours (QQQ, GLD, USO), price-update counts otherwise, and Coinbase volume for Bitcoin. It shows how busy a market is, not an exact dollar amount. No AI model is involved, so the page costs nothing to run.