An order book and a trade book are both essential components of trading platforms, but they serve distinct purposes.
- An order book reflects all orders placed by you. It displays all outstanding buy and sell orders for a particular security, providing insight into current supply and demand dynamics.
- In contrast, a trade book reflects only orders that have been converted into trades. It records executed trades, detailing the price, quantity, and timestamp of each transaction.
While the order book helps anticipate market movements by showing pending orders, the trade book provides a historical record of actual trades, aiding in performance analysis and trade verification.