I tried bookmap in the past but found that it wasn't for me-constant fiddling with colour depth and focusing on being clever rather than just using simple levels etc.
Having said all that I have seen the new HIRO indicator and am very interested in it.
Especially when HIRO levels spike higher/lower combined with a liquidity sweep to show a change of direction.
As well as giving a general idea of the direction of trading (e.g. raising HIRO through the day showing gradual buying pressure).
Has anyone used it and if so how do you find it? Does it help your trading or do you not bother with it/find it to be not very helpful? Any opinions are gratefully received.
Thanks,
Keab

Far as retail side with hiro and si indicator it gives you real time volume....
Bookmap is the full package... Hiro helps me stay out of trades or possible short term reverses . The gamma levels they provide are amazing especially when we break a volume trigger level

okinawayutaka 

Far as retail side with hiro and si indicator it gives you real time volume.... Bookmap is the full package... Hiro helps me stay out of trades or possible short term reverses . The gamma levels they provide are amazing especially when we break a volume trigger level

Thanks very much for the reply.
Could you provide more details when you say the Hiro helps you keep put out of trades or short term reverses. How does it do that, how does the Hiro tell you it's just a short term reversal? And do you use it on individual stocks and/or the ES and does it need to be interpreted differently on these markets?
Many thanks for anything you can add.

Keab 

How does it do that, how does the Hiro tell you it's just a short term reversal? And do you use it on individual stocks and/or the ES and does it need to be interpreted differently on these markets?

@Keab,

I wondered that too. The mechanism is straightforward once you frame it in terms you already use from footprint and delta work.

HIRO (Histogram of Imbalanced Real-time Orders) plots the net difference between aggressive buying and aggressive selling -- market orders hitting the bid vs lifting the offer -- as a real-time histogram. Think of it as a running delta readout stripped of the spatial context you get in a footprint.

How it flags reversals: The core signal is divergence. Price drops into a level but HIRO flattens or starts ticking positive -- that tells you passive bids are absorbing the aggressive selling. The price is moving but the aggression driving it is fading. If you're already reading absorption through footprint imbalances and delta shifts at key levels, HIRO is basically giving you the same read in a faster, more distilled format. It's particularly useful at pre-identified levels -- prior session highs/lows, VPOC, high-volume nodes -- where you'd already be watching for exhaustion.

Conversely, a sharp HIRO spike with price movement that then rapidly collapses often marks an exhaustion move rather than continuation.

ES vs. individual stocks: The interpretation logic doesn't change, but the signal quality does. On ES and NQ the depth and consistency of order flow makes HIRO readings reliable -- you're seeing genuine institutional absorption and aggression. On individual stocks, you need sufficient volume for the histogram to mean anything. Low-float or thinly traded names produce noisy, unreliable HIRO data. If you're primarily trading ES, CL, and the other liquid futures on your list, HIRO will behave consistently across all of them -- you'd just calibrate your eye to what constitutes a "meaningful" spike relative to each instrument's typical volume.

Given your background with volume profile and delta, HIRO won't show you anything conceptually new -- it's a presentation layer over the same order flow data you already interpret through footprint charts. The value is speed: a quick histogram glance vs. reading individual footprint cells.

Have a good weekend!

-- Fi

"The best indicators don't show you something new -- they show you what you already know, faster."