Visible Range Volume Profile Indicator

What it shows

Horizontal bars along the price scale, one per price row, each split into up volume and down volume. A red line marks the point of control (POC). Rows inside the value area use the stronger shade. Lines for the value area high and low are in the Style tab, switched off until you tick them.

How Pravex works it out

1. Pravex takes the candles that are visible and reads smaller candles for that stretch. The size is the first of 1, 5, 15, 30 and 60 minutes, 4 hours and 1 day that gives fewer than 5,000 candles across the visible range.
2. It cuts the price range between the lowest low and the highest high into rows. With a fixed row count the row height is the range divided by that count, rounded up to a whole tick. With a fixed row height each row is that many ticks tall.
3. Each small candle’s volume is shared across the rows between its low and its high, in proportion to how much of the row the candle covers. A candle with no range puts all its volume in the row of its close. A candle that closed at or above its open counts as up volume, any other as down volume.
4. The POC is the row with the most total volume (on a tie, the lowest row). The value area starts at the POC and grows one row at a time: Pravex compares the next row above with the next row below and adds the bigger one, until the rows hold the chosen share of all volume (70 percent by default). Equal rows add the closer one; equal distance adds the one above.

Settings

Setting	Default	What changing it does
How rows are sized	Number Of Rows	Chooses between a fixed number of rows (the visible price range is divided into that many) and a fixed row height in ticks (a wide range then gets more rows).
Rows (or ticks per row)	24	The row count in fixed-count mode, or the ticks in each row in fixed-height mode. More rows give a finer but noisier picture. Because the height is rounded up to a whole tick, you can get fewer rows than you asked for.
Bar style	Up/Down	Up/Down draws the up part and the down part of each row, Total draws one bar, Delta draws up minus down and colours it by the winning side. The POC and value area always come from total volume.
Share in the value area	70	The share of all volume, in percent, that the value area must hold. A lower share gives a narrower area around the POC, 100 covers every row. It accepts 0 to 100.
Histogram width	30	How much of the pane width the longest bar may take. The other bars are drawn in proportion to it. A drawing setting that changes no level.
Placement	Right	Which edge of the pane the bars grow from, Right or Left. The POC and value area lines run across the whole pane either way.

How traders read it

The POC and value area work as the market’s memory of where business was done. Price often slows down or reacts near the POC, and a move that leaves the value area and cannot get back in is read as a sign that the old balance is gone. Thin rows, where little volume traded, are places price tends to cross quickly.

Invented figures: the POC of the visible stretch sits at 100 and price is trading at 106 after a rally. Profile readers often watch the value area high on the way back down, and the POC after that. The profile gives levels to watch, not an order to place.

When it misleads

This profile only knows the candles on your screen, so scrolling or zooming changes it. The POC you see is a feature of that window, not a fixed level. Zoom out far and the smaller candles become coarse, which blurs the rows. The up and down split follows each small candle’s direction, not who actually bought and sold, and a candle’s volume is spread evenly over its range, which is a simplification. It also counts one venue’s volume, not the whole market.

Questions and answers

What is the point of control?

It is the price row with the most traded volume inside the range. On this profile it is the red line and the longest bar.

How is the value area worked out?

Starting at the POC, Pravex keeps adding the bigger of the row above and the row below until the rows hold 70 percent of the volume (the default). Change the value area share to widen or narrow it.

Does the profile change when I scroll or zoom?

Yes. It is rebuilt for whatever range is on screen, and the newest candle keeps adding volume until it closes. Volume already traded in a closed candle does not move.

Why is this page on bitcoin and not gold?

Spot gold carries no exchange volume, so there is nothing to add up. If you want a gold map of where price spent its time, the Market Profile TPO page counts time instead.

Related: Session Volume Profile, Periodic Volume Profile, Auto Anchored Volume Profile, Time Price Opportunity, every indicator.