The scanner provides several key metrics you can sort by:

Key Metrics Explained

Total Premium

This shows how much institutions are accumulating in total. For example, in the past 14 days, you might see institutions accumulating $13 billion of NVIDIA stock. That's a mixture of both buying and selling, but it represents heavy prints into the stock.

Print Count

This tells you how active institutions are in a particular stock. Very active stocks might show 134 orders, 127 orders, 100 orders, and so forth.

Bullish Ratio

Are institutions buying at or roughly at the ask? Or are they selling positions for less than current value because they want to get the stock off their hands?

As a buyer, you want to see heavier bullish percentage volume.

When utilizing dark pool data, I like to look at three different criteria:

1. Big buys — Overall large dollar amounts being accumulated
2. Aggressive buying — Institutions paying above market to get filled
3. Significant volume — Typically over 1% of daily volume

What Counts as "Heavy Volume"?

This is subjective, and everyone has their own filters:

• 1%+ of daily volume — My baseline for significance
• 3%+ of daily volume — Some traders use this threshold
• 5%+ of daily volume — More conservative threshold

The key is to see aggressive buying combined with meaningful volume.

Let me walk through a live example using United Health Care (UNH).

Initial Scanner Analysis

Looking at the scanner, I see:

• 27 orders in the dark pool
• 2.2 million shares traded
• $700 million total premium
• 63% buying vs 37% selling
• Roughly equal bullish vs bearish percentage volume

Overall, I'm getting a bullish sentiment with $700 million worth across multiple orders.

Diving Deeper Into Recent Prints

Looking at the trades over the last 14 days:

• 63% were bullish
• 17 bullish prints vs 10 bearish prints
• In the past day — very aggressive buying

Identifying Aggressive Buying

One print showed 40% premium above market price — the institution paid significantly more just to get filled right now. This signals urgency. They want to buy this share pretty much no matter what the current price is.

Multiple aggressive prints came through five hours ago, while the last bearish print was five days ago.

Finding the Key Price Level

Looking at the recent buys:

• $20 million buy
• Another $20 million buy
• Another $20 million buy
• And more...

That's roughly $100+ million worth of United Health Care stock at $323.21.

This becomes my area of institutional interest.

Now that I've identified the institutional interest level at $323.21, I want to observe how price behaves around this zone.

What I'm Looking For

• Price currently sitting right at $323.21
• I expect this level to find support in the upcoming days
• Heavy institutional buying suggests this is a significant zone

Combining With Other Analysis

Remember — I don't just buy because there's heavy buying. I want to confirm with:

Technical Analysis:

• Are we at an area of major demand?
• Are we at a volume point of control?
• Where are we on Fibonacci retracements?

In the example:

• Price sitting at roughly 0.382 Fibonacci retracement
• Sitting around the 100 simple moving average
• Multiple technical confluences aligning

By piecing everything together, I'm building a bullish thesis:

1. ✅ Heavy institutional dark pool buying
2. ✅ Aggressive buyers paying premium
3. ✅ Price at key technical levels
4. ✅ Multiple forms of confluence

Once again, it's not a crystal ball, but I use this to complement my bullish thesis that United Health Care may be a buy at $323.21.

1. Use the scanner to identify institutional interest — Look for heavy total premium and high print counts
2. Watch for aggressive buying — Institutions paying above market signals urgency
3. 1%+ of daily volume is significant — That's my baseline threshold
4. Identify key price levels — Where are institutions accumulating?
5. Always combine with technical analysis — Don't trade dark pool data in isolation
6. Look for confluence — Dark pool levels + technical levels = higher probability setups