The split is the story
Longs liquidating means forced SELLING — the flush amplifies a decline and, once spent, removes the sellers. Shorts liquidating is forced BUYING with the mirrored logic. A headline total blends both into noise; split by side, the same number becomes mechanics: which crowd was wrong, how hard, and what forced flow just hit the tape.
Side plus location plus size
The read sharpens with context. Long liquidations INTO a known support — a put wall, a prior flush low — are exhaustion candidates: forced sellers meeting mechanical buyers. Short liquidations through a resistance are the fuel of continuation, the engine inside most squeeze candidates. Same event class, opposite implications, decided by side and location.
The 24-hour lens
Rolling side-split totals also grade the REGIME: sessions where one side eats every flush are trending markets doing maintenance; alternating flushes mark a chop that is hunting both crowds. And per funding resets, the cleanest confirmation that a flush completed is the rate normalizing after the side-heavy print.
Reading it
Always split before judging; place the flush against the map; and remember the flow is mechanical — information about positioning that WAS, exhaust to be read, not momentum to be chased.