Volume profile, volume by price
Rotate the axis: where volume traded matters as much as when.
The volume bars under a chart show volume by time. A volume profile rotates the axis and shows volume by price, a sideways histogram of how much traded at each level. It is a map of where the market has done business, and it turns support and resistance from drawn lines into measured fact.
The three features that matter
- Point of control (POC), the single price with the most volume: the session's fairest price, and a magnet on revisits. Old POCs from prior days remain sticky levels.
- High-volume nodes (HVN), price shelves of heavy acceptance. Price entering an HVN tends to slow down and rotate, business was done here before and both sides re-engage.
- Low-volume nodes (LVN), thin gaps in the profile where the market never agreed. Price moves fast through them: no resting interest to slow it down. LVNs behave like air pockets between shelves.
Using the profile
The playbook: expect rotation and chop inside HVNs, expect acceleration through LVNs, respect the POC as a magnet, and watch the value area edges as the session's first support and resistance. Where a profile shelf lines up with swing structure or a GEX wall, you have three independent reasons for the same level, the confluence that separates A-setups from guesses.
The value area
Around the POC sits the value area (VA), the price band containing roughly 70% of the session's volume, i.e. one standard deviation of where business got done. Its edges, VAH (value area high) and VAL (value area low), are the two most-watched lines on a profile: inside them the market agreed on price, outside them it did not.
The default shape of a rotational day: a bell curve with the POC near the middle and thin tails at both extremes. Both sides showed up, neither won. Expect mean reversion, extensions toward the tails get pulled back toward the POC.