Market Profile TPO Indicator on Gold

What it shows

A column of letters (A, B, C and on) for each period, one row per price. When the cells are too small for letters you see plain blocks. The row with the most letters is the point of control (POC). Letters outside the value area are faded, and the colour shifts from the first block of the period to the last. Labels mark the value area high and low, the POC and the mid price, and a bar on the left marks the initial balance.

How Pravex works it out

Pravex reads candles of the letter length (30 minutes by default) and groups them into periods: one UTC day, a week from Monday, or a calendar month.
Each block gets a letter in order, A to Z and then a to z, repeating after 52. For every block, each price row between its low and its high gets that block’s letter once.
With the row height mode on Auto, the row height is a round number of ticks chosen to give about 50 rows over the average period range. Pravex then keeps that height while you pan, so the rows do not reshuffle. With Manual the row height is the number of ticks you set.
The POC is the row with the most letters. If rows tie, the one closest to the middle of the period’s range wins, then the lower one. The value area starts at the POC and adds the bigger of the next row above and below, counted in letters, until it holds the chosen share of all letters.
The initial balance is the high and low of the first few blocks of the period (2 by default, so the first hour with 30-minute blocks). The mid price is halfway between the period’s high and low.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Profile length	1 day	The length of each profile: 1 day, 1 week or 1 month. A week or month gives one tall profile with many letters and broader rows.
Letter length	30 minutes	How long each letter lasts: 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, or 1, 2 or 4 hours. Smaller blocks give more letters and a finer count of time, bigger blocks a simpler shape.
Row height mode	Auto	Auto picks a row height for about 50 rows per period. Manual lets you set it yourself with the row height setting.
Row height (ticks)	100	The row height in price ticks. It is used only when the row height mode is Manual. A bigger number gives fewer, taller rows.
Share of letters in the value area	70	The share of all letters, in percent, that the value area holds. It counts letters, which is time, not volume. 0 to 100.
Blocks in the opening range	2	How many blocks at the start of the period make up the initial balance. 1 to 52.
Letters in cells	on	Draws the letters in each cell. Turn it off for plain blocks. Letters also hide on their own when a cell is too small to read.
Names on key levels	on	Shows labels for the value area high, the POC, the value area low and the mid price.

How traders read it

The POC is the price the market accepted most, measured in time. A tall, narrow column of letters means the market spent a long time at those prices. A single row with just one letter, a thin spike, means price passed through fast and did not stay, and traders often watch those thin rows as places price might come back to.

The initial balance is the early range of the period. For illustration, with made-up numbers, it spans 100 to 104. If later letters push well outside that range, the market is said to be trending that day; if later letters stay inside it, the day is often called balanced.

When it misleads

Pravex cuts days at midnight UTC, but the gold trading day opens at 17:00 New York time, so a one-day profile can hold the end of one trading day and the start of the next. Gold also has no weekend candles, so there are no letters for Saturday or Sunday. A TPO count treats a quiet half hour and a wild one the same, because every touched row gets one letter, so it says nothing about how much traded. A very small block or a very large period can hit the 20,000 block limit, and then only the newest periods are drawn.

Questions and answers

What is the difference between TPO and a volume profile?

A volume profile counts how much traded at each price. TPO counts how many time blocks touched each price, whatever was traded. That is why TPO works on gold, which has no exchange volume.

What do the letters mean?

Each letter is one block of time, A for the first block of the period, B for the next and so on. A letter on a row means price traded at that row during that block.

Which letter length suits a 15-minute chart?

The default 30 minutes gives about two candles per letter and a readable shape. Try 1 hour if the letters are crowded.

Why does the point of control move during the day?

The current period keeps adding letters until it ends, so the row with the most letters can change. Letters in finished blocks stay where they are.