Every trade that clears prints to the time-and-sales tape — price, size, the exchange it printed on, and which side crossed the spread. Most of that is noise. But three patterns in it carry real information about how conviction is being placed, and they're the closest thing retail has to watching the institutional footprint form in real time. They pair naturally with a dealer-positioning read: the map is the terrain, the flow is the movement across it.
Sweeps — urgency
A sweep is a single order deliberately split across multiple exchanges and executed all at once. Someone isn't working a limit and waiting for a fill — they're crossing the spread on every venue that has size, because getting in now matters more than getting a better price. That urgency is the signal. A sweep is tagged by which side was the aggressor: lifting the offer on calls (or hitting the bid on puts) leans bullish; lifting puts (or dumping calls) leans bearish. One sweep isn't a thesis, but a cluster of same-side sweeps on a level is the tape telling you someone with size is leaning hard.
Blocks — size
A block is a single oversized print — far larger than the average trade going through that contract. Size like that rarely comes from a retail account clicking a button; it's a desk expressing a view (or a hedge) in one shot. Blocks don't tell you direction by themselves the way a sweep does — a large call block could be an opening bullish bet or a dealer's hedge — but combined with the dealer-hedging picture and where it printed relative to the walls, an outsized print is a flag that something deliberate just happened.
Dark pool — the quiet accumulation
Not all volume trades on the lit exchanges. A large share of it prints to off-exchange (FINRA) venues — dark pools and internalizers — where big players work size without tipping the visible order book (dark pools, explained). Those prints still hit the consolidated tape, just tagged to an off-exchange venue. Persistent, heavy dark-pool volume in the underlying is the fingerprint of institutional accumulation or distribution — the positioning that doesn't show up on the chart until later (dark-pool prints & dealer levels).
Flow doesn't predict price. It tells you where conviction is being placed — and conviction, unlike an indicator, has money behind it.
Why it belongs next to the dealer map
On its own, flow is anecdotes. Layered onto the dealer map, it becomes context. A wall of call sweeps into the call wall is a very different story from the same sweeps in open air. Dark-pool accumulation under the put wall while dealers sit long gamma says one thing; the same prints in a negative-gamma regime says another. The map gives you the structure; the flow tells you whether anyone is pushing against it right now.
Getting it without a flow terminal
Reading raw time-and-sales for three tickers all session is not realistic by hand, and dedicated flow terminals run hundreds of dollars a month. NoVo Analyst reads the two you can act on — sweeps and blocks — in-house off the live tape for SPY, QQQ and IWM, right on the dealer-map dashboard: sweep bias and call-versus-put sweep premium, plus the block count and notional, per ticker, updating through the session. (Dark pool is an off-exchange equity print that the consolidated options-tape feed doesn't isolate, so it isn't part of the read.) It's the order-flow footprint sitting next to the net-GEX regime, the gamma flip, and the walls — one read, no third-party feed between you and the print. See dealer-flow analysis for retail and what the daily read gives you.