qewcool

The TPO POC is the price at which the greatest amount of TPO has accumulated during the day ie the fattest part of the profile.

Nice discussion going at least we put some new posts in the market profile section I guess we are all saying almost the same thing but in different ways. My point on the subject of Volume or TPO is that you have to go back to what POC and value area are supposed to mean or represent in Market Profile theory. And it is pretty much a core idea in MP. Like I said, from what I understand, it means acceptance ie a price level where market participants are comfortable to trade at as a consensus of value. And how does one recognize it on an MP chart ? MP is composed of price, time and volume. Acceptance shows up as rotation with time and volume being accumulated at the accepted value price level. so yes I completely agree that both volume and TPO is used to confirm an acceptance level. And the more time you spend trading at a level, the more volume there is going to be at that level. And here is I think the important point that explains the confusion : The rotation trades at the value area where the market is balanced are being done by the short term market participants whose notion of value is again short term. When you see a spike in volume with no time spent (yet) compared to an earlier price area where there seems to be less volume but with a high tpo count. What you see is longer term market participants entering the market and displacing the balance area being established by the short term market participants. Their notion of value is different because it is longer term value. It is why i say that the described picture is a symptom of imbalance. So where is the new value area ? We dont know yet. You again need rotation (which over time adds volume) that shows that near-term market participants are willing to trade at a new level and has accepted it as a new consensus of value. If they dont accept it, they will again trade back at the old consensus of value. For the longer term market participants, it does not matter because their value consensus is different. And the volume associated with the trades that they made that day must also be taken into account with a longer term perspective ie that spike in volume may not be a spike at all if compared to volume on the longer term time-frame (composite MP chart) that they operate in. That is why I dont think that the day volume spike (if not accompanied by tpo count showing rotation) can be the POC until we see further development. So the confusion comes from the fact that we are comparing longer term activity with short term activity. Macdougall said apples and oranges and I agree. As for convoluted or cryptic answers, I am not under the illusion that interpreting market activity is a simple endeavour. But I do appreciate the ability to explain such complex subjects in a succinct and straightforward fashion such as MacDougall did. And I think that a lot of people agree that Dalton books are not the most straightforward texts that have been written although the ideas are certainly valid. But hell, we dont have that many books on MP so I would love it if Dalton (or anybody else) wrote another book on the subject.

Not a problem. We all have different opinions and I respect all of them I am not saying I dont appreciate Dalton books. I read the second book , appreciate it a lot for learning market profile, and would recommend with no problem. Im just saying that sometimes some answers seems convoluted when it could be more straightforward, succinct or efficient if you prefer. Maybe you can detail the point that I overlooked in the context of the subject of this thread as constructive criticism.

a bit pricey for one document from 20 years ago dont ya all think ? .....

I think macdougall answers shows understanding of the MP concepts the most. The key goal of MP is to find indeed balance and acceptance of a price level that will facilitate trade (rotation). A spike in volume not confirmed by time cannot be a control price that will serve as trade facilitator. It is in fact a symptom of imbalance which is the opposite of the idea of a POC. I also find it funny that the answer from the dalton course is the most cryptic and convoluted answer of the thread while macdougall answer is straight-forward, simple and efficient.

The only thing that I think is missing in the fin-alg version is the ability to do composite profile and the preset composite profiles for 5, 10, 20 days. you can merge profiles but it can only be done 2 session at a time. not multiple sessions at once. Also I like the idea of atrader to be able to overlay composite profile with a daily profile all on the same chart

the ES chart looks ok the YM chart looks really weird .... not usable at all. Im using IB data. The same data for YM looks fine on the fin-alg version of MP as any other chart like ZB or a forex USD/CAD chart. I read the manual but nothing seems to help fix the atrader YM chart another thing is the atrader version only does Vol based POC and not TPO based POC. the Fin-alg version has the option to switch between the 2.

Seems nice will try it out although I already got the fin-alg stuff for NT just a couple of months ago. Is this just released this month ? why did we never heard about it. They could have made a bit of advance advertising on forums. It would have delayed my fin-alg purchase until I try atrader out and they could have had an additional customer

Thanks for the reply. Like I said in the original post. I was not looking for the TPO graphic itself but the long term auction chart that one would fill everyday to see whether the market is in balance or imbalanced and if a unit of distribution is complete. And I wanted to know if anyone uses it since I dont see anyone talking about it but it seems to be essential to Steidlmayer way of analysing markets using market profile.

Was wondering what software is used to plot the value areas in the long term auction charts as taught by the Steidlmayer literature and the cbot guide on market profile ? you can do it by hand but thought of asking if anyone does it by software or even an excel sheet ? I am talking about the long term auction chart which shows only the values areas drawn vertically (when there is distribution) and horizontally (when there is development) and not the market profile TPO graphic itself. Thanks in advance.

Hi can anyone repost/reattach Bobajob latest Excel sheet and his pdf ? the link on megaupload seems not to work anymore Thanks in advance