The aggressor split
Every trade has a passive side (resting order) and an aggressive one (crossed the spread). Summing volume by aggressor side yields taker imbalance: net urgency, the crowd that paid the spread’s toll to act immediately. Sustained taker buying with a rising tape is demand doing the pushing; taker selling into flat price is urgency being absorbed by someone patient.
The absorption read
The second case is the valuable one: heavy one-sided taker flow that FAILS to move price means resting orders are eating it — size on the passive side with a view. Absorption at a mapped level — a wall, a prior flush zone — is as close as the tape comes to showing you the other side of the trade in real time.
The literalism traps
Taker labels describe order mechanics, not identity — sophisticated flow slices both ways, market makers hedge aggressively when forced, and one venue’s imbalance can be an arbitrage leg against another’s. The read is regime-level and venue-aware, never a single-print oracle.
Reading it
Pair imbalance with price response: pushing-and-moving is trend flow, pushing-and-failing is absorption, and either one AT a mapped level outranks both in open space. Urgency is information; where it fails is more.