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Volume Profile

Volumedraws on the price

Volume by price instead of by time. The widest bar is the point of control; the shaded band holds 70% of everything traded.

On this chart: 60 price bins over the visible range, 70% value area.

What it measures

Volume Profile rotates the volume axis: instead of when trading happened, it shows at what prices. Each horizontal bar is the volume transacted in that price bin, with a bar's volume spread across the prices it actually traded through. The longest bar is the point of control — the price where the most business was done — and the shaded value area holds 70% of the total, grown outward from it.

How to read it

High-volume nodes are prices the market accepted — trading lingered there, and returning price tends to slow in them. Low-volume gaps are prices the market rejected, which price tends to traverse quickly. The point of control is the visible range's center of gravity.

Using it on the wheel

This is the strongest support-and-resistance evidence on the chart, because it shows where trading actually occurred rather than where a line was drawn. A put strike beneath a heavy volume node sits behind a shelf of real transactions; one in a low-volume gap has little transacted interest between it and the price.

The profile is computed from the visible range — zoom or pan and it recomputes over what you see. That is the correct behavior (the question is always 'where did the volume in this window trade'), but it means two zoom levels give two profiles.

Like everything in this guide, these are descriptions of conditions and reference levels — context for your own decisions, not instructions to trade.