Volume profile and TPO

Profiles turn the view around: instead of volume over time, they show volume or time per price. This lets you see where the market found value, where it moved through quickly and which prices it could revisit.

Three terms come up everywhere:

• POC (point of control): the price with the most volume or the most time. It is yellow.
• Value area: the range around the POC that contains a set share, 70% by default.
• VAH and VAL: the upper and lower edges of the value area.

Volume Profile (VPVR)

The Volume Profile shows the volume per price level for the visible range of the chart. If you pan or zoom, it recalculates. It is available in all plans and for every symbol with volume.

Top bar → Indicators → Order flow tab → Volume Profile (VPVR) → + Add.

• The bars sit at the edge of the chart, buy volume cyan, sell volume red. Bars in the value area are stronger.
• The POC level is yellow, with a yellow line labeled “POC” and the price.
• VAH and VAL are dashed lines with labels.
• The legend shows the POC price.

Counted or approximated

The profile calculates in two ways:

• From trades: With Pro it counts, where possible, every trade at its price level, separated into buy and sell.
• Approximated from candles: Otherwise it spreads each candle's volume over its range, most strongly around the middle of its body. It separates buy and sell using the taker buy share where the candles have it. Without this share, for example with stocks, it shows only gray total bars.

When counting from trades, the number of rows has an upper limit: it does not split finer than about 0.01% of the price.

Session Volume Profile

The Session Volume Profile draws a separate volume profile for each session, starting at the beginning of the session. It is available in all plans.

Top bar → Indicators → Order flow tab → Session Volume Profile → + Add.

How long a session is depends on the interval:

Days start at midnight in your local time. Dashed vertical lines separate the sessions, and each one gets its POC line and dashed lines for VAH and VAL. Sessions with fewer than three candles stay empty.

It counts or approximates as the Volume Profile does, per session.

TPO / Market Profile

TPO stands for Time Price Opportunity. Instead of volume, the Market Profile counts time: for each time segment of a session, every price level the price touched in that segment gets a letter. Where many letters stack up, the market traded for a long time.

TPO is part of Pro and needs an interval of up to 1 hour. At coarser intervals the chart says “TPO / Market Profile needs an interval of 1h or less”.

• Top bar → Chart type → group ORDERFLOW → TPO / Market Profile,
• or Top bar → Indicators → Order flow tab → TPO / Market Profile.

When you turn it on, the chart shows about the last three days, with some room on the right.

How to read the profile

• Each session is one day, from midnight in your local time. Dashed lines separate the days, and each has its date below it, for example “Oct 7”.
• Each segment (30 minutes or 1 hour) has a letter: A to X, then a to x.
• The POC, the level with the most letters, is yellow. Letters in the value area are bright, those outside it dimmed.
• Single prints, levels touched by only one segment, have a teal background. They show fast moves that the market often retests later.
• The initial balance, the range of the first hour, is a cyan stroke at the left edge of the session.
• Small strokes mark the open (left) and close (right) of the session.

Auto shows letters when there is enough room, otherwise blocks. The height of a level follows the zoom, about 10 pixels. On a 1-hour chart, each segment is one hour, even if 30m is set.

How TPO calculates

TPO calculates only from the candles: the high and low of each segment. It needs no trades and therefore runs on every symbol, including stocks. In exchange, it does not know how long the price stayed at a level within a segment; every touched level counts the same.