For traders who are done being inconsistent and want a real process.
Build a Volume Profile
A candle chart shows you when price moved. A volume profile shows you where the market actually did business. You are going to build one yourself, one candle at a time.
The idea in one minute
Take a normal candle chart and ask one different question. Not "what happened over time", but "how much traded at each price?"
Every candle trades a certain amount of volume, and that volume lands on the prices inside the candle's range. Take each candle, tip its volume sideways into those price rows, and stack every candle of the session on top of each other. The result is a sideways histogram. That is a volume profile.
Long rows are prices where the market spent time and traded a lot. The market accepted them. Short rows are prices it moved through quickly. The longest row of all is the point of control, the POC: the price where the most business was done.
Pour sand from a moving hand. Where your hand lingers, the pile grows tall. Where it passes quickly, you barely leave a trace. Price is the hand, volume is the sand.
Build it, candle by candle
One session in half hour candles. Add them one at a time and watch each candle's volume slide across into the profile. You start to see the POC settle where the market kept coming back.
Go deeper: row size, and why the POC can jump
Row size is how many prices get grouped into one row. At one tick, every price has its own row and the profile looks spiky. At two points, rows merge and the shape gets smoother. The overall shape stays the same. Detail, and sometimes the exact POC price, does not.
The POC can also jump while the session is still going. Two areas can be close in volume, and one heavy half hour tips it from one to the other. That is normal. A POC that keeps moving is a market still deciding where fair price is. A POC that sits still for hours is a market that has decided.
Guess the POC
Here are the candles, and the profile is hidden. Drag the gold line to where you think the most volume traded, then reveal it.
Why candles are not enough
A shortcut people try: take each candle's volume and spread it evenly over its range. It looks close. It is not the same thing. Flip between the two and watch the thin areas and the POC.
How I use it
Before the open, the first thing I look at is the prior session's profile. Where is the POC. Where did volume pile up. Where was it thin. Those are the prices I expect the market to care about today.
I am not predicting anything with it. I am marking where the auction did business and where it did not, so that when price gets there, I know to pay attention and I know what I am looking for on the footprint chart, the chart that shows the buying and selling at each price.
Checkpoint
Checkpoint4 quick questions on volume profile
What does a volume profile show you?
What is the POC?
Why is spreading each candle's volume evenly over its range only a rough copy?
You change the row size from 1 tick to 2 points. What happens?
Recap
- A volume profile is every candle's volume, tipped sideways into the prices it traded at, and stacked.
- Long rows are prices the market accepted. Short rows are prices it moved through quickly.
- The POC is the longest row: the price where the most business was done.
- It is built from volume at each price. Candles alone only give you a rough copy.
Next step: what the shape of a profile tells you about the day, what value area means, and how to trade around both. That is what the Mentorship is for.
The Mentorship
You just built a volume profile. Now learn to trade it.
Knowing it is one thing. Trading it live is where most traders fall apart: they hesitate, enter late, get stopped out, and watch the move go without them.
The free lessons show you what the market is doing. The Mentorship teaches you how to trade it.
You can keep piecing it together from free videos for months, jumping between strategies. Or you can learn it properly, in order, with me in your corner.
- Direct access to me. Stuck on a setup, a level or a losing streak? Ask me directly in the Discord. No more guessing alone.
- The complete Mentorship course. Not the free intro. My full process, step by step: how I read the day, plan my levels, and enter, manage and exit my trades.
- The Discord community. Traders working the same process as you. You're not doing this alone anymore.
For traders who are done being inconsistent and want a real process.
Apply for the MentorshipA few short questions. If it's a fit, you book your call on the next step.
Start Free
Not ready to invest in yourself yet? I still got you.
Here's my free 7 hour course: auction market theory, order flow and volume profile, taking you from beginner to advanced.
Free, just create a free Skool account
Or watch the whole masterclass on YouTube, nothing to sign up for.