Tool
Volume Profile
market.volume_profile
Inputs
No typed inputs.
Outputs
A horizontal volume-by-price histogram: each bar is the volume that traded at a price bucket. The tallest bar is the Point of Control, and the busiest bins covering value_area_pct of volume form the value area.
Volume Profile shows how much volume traded at each price level over a recent window, drawn as a horizontal histogram. Traders use it to find the prices the market cared about most: the heaviest bar is the Point of Control (POC), and the band of busiest prices is the value area.
How it works
It looks back over the last window bars, splits that price range into bins price buckets, and sums the volume that traded inside each bucket. The bucket with the most volume is the POC; the contiguous bins that together hold value_area_pct of all the volume (e.g. 70%) make up the value area.
Configuration
How many recent bars to profile. A larger window summarizes more history; a smaller one focuses on the latest activity.
How many price buckets to split the window's price range into. More bins give finer price resolution but thinner, noisier bars; fewer bins give coarser, sturdier levels.
The fraction of total volume that defines the value area, as a decimal. 0.7 means the busiest bins holding 70% of volume form the value area.
Connects to
Examples
- Route the profile into interpretor.volume_profile_level to gate entries when price reaches the POC or the value-area edges.
- Use a high-volume node (a busy bin) as a magnet target, and a low-volume node as a fast-move zone.
Common mistakes
- Setting too few bins, which lumps distinct levels together and hides the real POC.
- Profiling on instruments with unreliable volume (e.g. forex tick volume), where the bar heights don't reflect true traded interest.