None of these signals is useful on its own. A workable routine asks a short list of questions in the same order every time.
- Who is crowded? Funding and long/short ratios: which side is paying and which side has more to lose?
- Is new money arriving? Open interest against price: are positions being added or closed?
- Who is pushing? Spot and perpetual delta: is a move led by real buying or by leverage?
- What is waiting? Depth and heatmaps: where is the real liquidity, and is it holding?
- What would break it? Where would liquidations start, and how much size would it take?
An example reading
Price rises, open interest rises, funding climbs, spot CVD stays flat and thin asks sit above. That's a leveraged rally with no spot demand behind it. It may keep going for a while, and it's also fragile. The reading isn't a prediction: it's a description of where the risk is.
Where this stops working
Order flow describes minutes and hours, not months. Venues differ, data has gaps, and when large players want to hide their intent they will. Treat it as a way of understanding the market you're looking at, and pair it with the slower evidence from the on-chain and options courses.