Reading a limit as information

The maximum a book will accept on a market is a direct statement about how confident it is in that number. Low limits mean low confidence.

A book protects itself where it expects to be wrong, and the cheapest protection is refusing size. The limit is therefore an honest signal that costs nothing to observe.

Limits also reflect market maturity — they rise as kick-off approaches and information arrives, then fall again in play.

What follows from that is less comfortable. It is free information that almost nobody reads, because it is displayed as a constraint rather than as a signal.

What to do with it. Check the limit before the price. It tells you what the book thinks about its own number.