Impact of "Aggregate by Order/Period" Settings in Cumulative Volume Delta Study

[Merc]

For Context:
I’ve transitioned from TradingView to MotiveWave to leverage Rithmic’s MBO data for advanced order-flow analysis. My strategy relies heavily on Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) to identify institutional exhaustion/absorption. I'd be grateful for some guidance on the following settings:

• Aggregation settings: "Aggregate by Order" and/or "Aggregate by Period" (milliseconds).
• Minimum Trade Size: (e.g., 100+ contracts RTH).

While I understand the "Aggregate by Period" and Minimum Trade Size settings in connection with the Big Trades study, I’m uncertain how they impact the CVD study. The documentation doesn’t clarify this, and visual backtesting shows ambiguous results.

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Specific Questions:​

1. Aggregate by Order:
   
   • Does this only consolidate multi-leg executions (e.g., 500-lot order → single delta entry), or does it also filter out trades below the "Minimum Size" threshold?
   • If it doesn’t filter, what’s the functional difference between enabling/disabling this?
2. Aggregate by Period:
   
   • How does millisecond aggregation (e.g., 100ms) affect delta calculation? Does it smooth delta within a candle or alter the net delta value? Something else?
3. Interaction with Minimum Size:
   
   • Is the "Minimum Size" filter applied before or after aggregation?
   • Example: If I set "Min Size = 100," will a 75+25-lot order be:
     • Filtered out?
     • Aggregated into 100 and displayed?
     • Treated as two separate trades (75 filtered, 25 shown)?
4. Visual Impact:
   
   • Why does the CVD candle’s appearance remain identical whether aggregation is enabled/disabled? Shouldn’t aggregated orders create taller/smoother candles?

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Why This Matters:​

• Strategy Dependency: I use CVD engulfing candles/divergence for entries. If aggregation alters delta dynamics, my signals may be misread.
• MBO Advantage: I want to exploit Rithmic’s true aggressor data—but only if I understand what the study outputs.

Settings screenshot attached. Many thanks in advance for your guidance!