Session TPO: Daily Market Profile on Gold

What it shows

A column of letters (A, B, C and on) for each day, 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), and letters outside the value area are faded, and the colour shifts from the first block of the day 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 by UTC date, so each profile is one UTC day. Unlike the Time Price Opportunity indicator, you cannot choose a length: it is always one day.
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 day range. Pravex 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. On a tie the row closest to the middle of the day’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 day (2 by default). The mid price is halfway between the day’s high and low.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
Session split (not shown)	All	Kept in saved layouts but not shown in the Inputs tab. Pravex splits by UTC day either way, so both choices draw the same profile.
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 day. 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 day 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

Read each day as a small map. A fat middle with letters from many blocks says the market spent the day rotating around one price. A long thin tail of single letters says price moved quickly through that area, and profile readers watch those thin rows for a return.

Comparing days is where the session view helps. Made-up numbers: yesterday’s value area ran from 100 to 105 and today’s POC is at 108. Traders would call that a day that accepted higher prices, and watch whether 105 holds from above. It is a way of describing the day, not a signal.

When it misleads

The days are cut at midnight UTC, but the gold trading day opens at 17:00 New York time, so a profile can contain the end of one trading day and the start of the next. There are no weekend candles for gold, so there are no Saturday or Sunday profiles. Every touched row gets one letter, so a calm half hour and a violent one count the same, and the profile says nothing about how much traded. A day that has just started has only a few letters and a POC that will move.

Questions and answers

What is Session TPO?

A Market Profile built one day at a time. Each half hour is a letter, and the letters stack up at every price the market touched during that half hour.

Why does Session TPO work on gold when volume profiles do not?

Spot gold carries no exchange volume, but every candle has a high and a low. TPO only needs those, so it can count time at each price without any volume.

What is the difference between Session TPO and the Time Price Opportunity indicator?

The Time Price Opportunity indicator lets you pick a day, week or month. Session TPO is always one UTC day.

Can I change when the day starts?

No. Each profile is one UTC day, from midnight to midnight, and there is no setting for the start time. For longer profiles use the Market Profile TPO page.