Dynamic Depth Report

The four coloured bands (yellow, green, blue, red) are a visual indicator of the number of shares available at each of the top four levels of Bid (or Ask, depending on which side).

For example, at the moment Telstra's top four levels of Bid are at 402,000, 641,000, 2,000,000, and 1,000,000 respectively. Thus, the yellow band is a thin sliver, the green band is about 150% as wide, the blue band is about 500% as wide, and the red band is about 250% as wide (as the first band).

You'll also note that sometimes one of the 'bid' or 'ask' bars has an extra black line across it, somewhere down toward the end. If there's a different number of bids and asks, the extra black line appears on the smaller side to show how much of an imbalance there is. You can get a clearer picture of how this works if you turn on "Cumulative Qty B/A" at the bottom of the dynamic depth report.

For example, at the moment Telstra has about 12,000,000 shares in the 'bid' column, but only about 5,000,000 in the 'Ask' column. Therefore the little black line appears on the 'Ask' side, slightly less than halfway along - because there's slightly less than half as many 'Asks' as there are 'Bids'.

Hope that helps!