Every candlestick chart in India shows you the same four numbers: open, high, low, close. A Market Profile chart shows you something no candle can — where buyers and sellers actually agreed on value, and where they refused to. Once you can read that shape, support and resistance stop being lines you guessed and start being places the market itself chose. Here is how to read it.
You do not need to understand everything on this page to start. You need these three moves.
Use the symbol dropdown — it searches as you type, so "rel" finds RELIANCE. Press F2 to jump straight into it. The coloured badge beside it tells you the stock's sector, and your Quick Watchlist chips above the toolbar switch symbols in one click.
Every day is a column of letters. The widest section is where the market agreed — the value area, shaded on the chart. The longest single row is the POC, marked with a dotted line. That is the fairest price of the day and price keeps coming back to it.
Above the value area, buyers are winning. Below it, sellers are. Inside it, the market is balanced and you should usually stand aside. That single question — where is price relative to value? — is the whole discipline in one sentence.
Why the letters, though? Because time is the honest measure of agreement.
Each letter is one 30-minute session, printed at every price it traded. If a price keeps attracting trade, letters pile up next to each other and the profile grows fat there — the market is saying "this is fair". If price shoots through a level, only one letter ever prints there — the market is saying "nobody wanted to do business here". Fat means accepted. Thin means rejected. Everything else on this page is detail built on that one idea.
The Glossary button (or F1) defines each term formally. This is what each one is for when you are deciding whether to take a trade.
| What you see | What it is | What you do with it |
|---|---|---|
| The shaded band | Value Area — where 70% of the day traded | Your map of fair value. Price inside it = balance, no edge, wait. Price leaving it and staying out = a real move worth trading. The two edges, VAH (top) and VAL (bottom), are the most reliable intraday support and resistance you will find, because the market drew them, not you. |
| The dotted line | POC — Point of Control, the longest row of letters | The single fairest price of the day and a genuine magnet. On quiet days, fading the extremes back toward the POC is a whole strategy. On trending days, watch for price failing to return to it — that failure is the trend telling you it is real. |
| Single letters at the top or bottom | Tails (also called excess) | Somebody stepped in hard and rejected that price. A tail at the low is aggressive buying; at the high, aggressive selling. Tails give you what every trade needs and most setups lack: a defined place to put your stop, just beyond the tail. |
| A thin single-letter gap mid-profile | Single prints / minus development | Price moved so fast it left a hole. These become future support and resistance, and they are unfinished business the market usually returns to fill. When price comes back to a print, watch the reaction: holding is a continuation signal, slicing through is not. |
| The first-hour range | IB — Initial Balance (sessions A + B, 9:15–10:15) | The day's playing field. A narrow IB is a coiled spring — expect a trend day. A wide IB means the day already spent its range, so fade the edges instead of chasing breakouts. Price breaking IB high or low is a range extension, one of the most tradeable events of the session. |
| "Range:" under each day | That day's high-to-low distance | Instant volatility context. Compare it across the visible days: a day printing half the usual range is compressing, and compression resolves in a move. |
| "Vol: 1.42x" under each day | That day's volume ÷ its recent average | Participation in one number, right on the chart. Above 1x means more people than usual showed up, which makes the day's structure more trustworthy. Below 1x, treat the levels as provisional — thin days draw unreliable lines. |
| "TPO Count = 14/9" | Letters above the POC vs below it | A quick balance reading. Heavily lopsided upward means buyers spent more of the day in control even if the close does not show it — often an early hint of who is winning before price confirms it. |
| The letters themselves | O = the open, A–M = each 30-minute session | Read them in order and you get the story of the day: where it opened, which direction it committed to, when it changed its mind. The status bar shows the live session letter so you always know which letter is being written right now. |
You trade the futures contract, but the chart is built from cash market (equity) data. That is deliberate, and it makes your levels better, not worse. Here is exactly why.
The platform runs on the cash (equity) segment by default, so the symbol list covers every NSE equity stock — F&O and non-F&O alike. If it ran on futures instead, you would be limited to the ~200 names that happen to have F&O contracts. Running on cash means the chart works for the whole market.
1. No expiry, no seams. Every futures contract dies once a month. When it rolls, the price series jumps and the volume splits across two contracts. That wrecks exactly the things this platform is built on — multi-day composites, weekly and monthly value areas, and volume baselines all need one clean, unbroken series. Cash gives you that: RELIANCE in the cash market is the same continuous instrument this month, last month and last year.
2. No premium drift. Futures trade at a premium to cash that decays toward expiry. So a futures POC from three weeks ago is not comparable to today's futures price — the same "level" has quietly moved. Cash levels do not drift, which is what makes a POC from last week still meaningful today.
3. It is where real ownership happens. The cash market is where delivery-based buying occurs. That makes volume and delivery percentage genuinely informative about conviction, in a way that pure futures turnover is not.
4. It is the price everyone else quotes. News, results, analyst targets and every other trader's chart reference the cash price. Your levels line up with the levels the rest of the market is watching — and levels work partly because everyone can see them.
| Symbol | Data used, and why |
|---|---|
| NIFTY FUT, BANKNIFTY FUT | Futures. An index is a calculated number — you cannot trade it and it has no volume of its own. The futures contract is where the actual auction happens, so that is what the profile is built from. Anything ending in FUT always uses futures data. |
| NIFTY INDEX, BANKNIFTY INDEX, FINNIFTY, INDIAVIX | Spot index. When you want the pure index level with no futures premium in it, use the INDEX version. Handy for comparing today's index structure against historical levels without basis muddying it. |
| NIFTYNXT50, MIDCPNIFTY | Futures, always. These have no usable cash feed from the data provider, so they stay on futures regardless of the setting. |
| Every F&O stock — RELIANCE, HDFCBANK, INFY… | Cash (equity). For all the reasons above. Stock futures track cash closely intraday, so the structure you read here is the structure you trade there. |
| Non-F&O stocks | Cash. They have no F&O contract at all — and they are only on the list because the platform runs on cash. |
One practical adjustment. Because the future usually trades at a small premium to cash, a level read here will sit a few points below the same level on your futures order screen. Note the gap once at the open — it is stable through the day — and add it when you place the order. The structure is identical; only the absolute number shifts.
Same data, three zoom levels of intent. Most traders live in Classic and check Composite once a week.
The traditional TPO view, one letter per 30-minute session. This is your default and where you should spend most of your time. Letters make the shape instantly readable and let you see when each part of the profile was built just by reading the alphabet.
The same profile with numbered sessions instead of letters. Easier when you are counting precisely — how many sessions held a level, exactly which period broke the IB — and clearer for anyone who finds a wall of letters hard to scan.
Merges many days into one profile, so each letter becomes a whole period. Choose Weekly (1W) or Monthly (4W). This is where you find the big shelves that actually matter — the levels institutions defend for weeks, invisible on a single day. The chart labels the period and date range for you.
Split separates a day into its individual sessions side by side instead of collapsing them into one column. Use it when a day looks messy and you want to watch the auction develop step by step — especially good for spotting the exact session a double distribution formed. Press it again to Unsplit.
That small badge next to the symbol showing a number is the most underused control on the page. Click it and a panel opens.
TPO size is how much price each row of the profile represents. If TPO size is 5, then every row is a 5-rupee band and a letter prints once per band. It is the resolution of your profile — the equivalent of choosing a candle timeframe, but for price instead of time.
Set it too fine and every row has one or two letters: the profile looks tall and spindly, single prints appear everywhere, and nothing means anything. Set it too coarse and the whole day collapses into four fat rows — you lose the tails, the prints, and the shape you came for. The right size makes the value area obvious at a glance.
The platform computes a sensible value automatically for every symbol, which is why a ₹200 stock and a ₹90,000 index both look readable by default. You only reach for this when you want a closer look.
− / + step one notch coarser or finer. The finer and coarser presets jump two steps at once. You can type an exact value and apply it. Auto resets to the computed value, and the panel always shows you what that auto value was, so you can never get lost.
Practical habit: leave it on auto. When a level looks important and you want to know precisely where the single prints start and stop, step two notches finer, take your reading, then hit Auto. Traders who zoom in on the levels that matter read profiles far better than traders who never touch this dial.
The TPO profile measures time. The Volume Profile measures quantity. Turning it on layers a volume-by-price histogram over the same day, and where the two disagree is often the most useful thing on your screen.
Volume by price for each visible day, with its own VPOC (the price that traded the most volume), value area edges, and node markers. Hover any level for detail.
Merges every visible day into one master volume profile. This is how you find the multi-day shelves — the price bands that have absorbed enormous volume over weeks and reliably stop moves.
A slide-out panel with the numbers written out: VAH, VAL, VPOC, VA width, VPOC migration, shape, HVN/LVN, naked VPOCs and session split. Click any day's column to load it. It has its own built-in glossary if a term is new.
Amber is the VPOC, blue the value area, magenta an untested naked VPOC, violet the TPO POC and red the last price. Seeing TPO POC and VPOC in the same place is a strong confirmation; seeing them far apart is a warning.
| Term | What it means, and why you care |
|---|---|
| VPOC | The single price with the most traded volume today. A magnet — price tends to revisit it. Where the TPO POC says "we spent the most time here", the VPOC says "we did the most business here". |
| nVPOC (naked) | The highest-value item in this panel. A previous day's VPOC that price has never come back to test. Unfinished business at a price where huge volume once traded — a high-probability magnet, and an excellent target for a trade already in profit. |
| HVN | High Volume Node — a thick shelf away from the VPOC. Price slows down and often reverses here. Good place to take profit, bad place to enter a breakout. |
| LVN | Low Volume Node — a thin gap inside the profile where almost nothing traded. Price slices through these fast, which makes them excellent breakout entry levels and terrible places to sit with a tight stop. |
| VA Width | How wide the value area is relative to the day's range. Narrow means a trend day; wide means a balanced day. A one-glance read on what kind of day you are in. |
| VPOC Migration | How far today's VPOC moved from yesterday's. A big jump means a new auction has started at a different price — real imbalance, not noise. Steady migration in one direction over several days is a trend you can hold. |
| Session Split | When the volume at a level was built — Open (9:15–11:30), Mid (11:30–14:00) or Close (14:00–15:30). Levels built at midday are the strongest fair-value markers, because they were made without opening panic or closing-auction distortion. |
| Profile Shape | A one-badge summary: D = balanced day, P = short covering, b = long liquidation, Trend = directional, Double = two distributions. If you learn only one item here, learn this — it tells you whether to trend-follow or fade before you look at anything else. |
The trick most people miss: read both profiles together.
When the TPO POC and the VPOC sit at the same price, time and money agree. That level is solid — lean on it.
When they are far apart, the market spent a lot of time at one price but did its real business at another. Time without volume is drift; volume without time is a violent, decisive move. The VPOC is usually the level that ends up mattering, and that disagreement is often your earliest warning that the obvious level is about to fail.
Opens a 3-minute candlestick chart under the profile. The profile tells you which level matters; these candles tell you when to press the button. Use the profile to choose the level and the candles to time the entry — that division of labour is the whole point of having both.
The ← → arrows walk back through previous trading days. This is the single best way to learn: pick a level, go back a week, and watch what price actually did when it reached it. Twenty days of your own observation beats twenty videos.
Hands the current stock's full profile to SarthoAI and gets a plain-language read — the structure, what it implies, what to watch. Press F3. Genuinely useful while the vocabulary is still new: you see the chart and read the explanation side by side.
Freehand, trend line, horizontal line and rectangle, plus clear-all. The horizontal line is the one that earns its keep — mark yesterday's VAH, an untested naked VPOC or a single print zone, and your level stays visible as the day develops.
Chips above the toolbar for your most-watched symbols, one click each. Add current pins whatever you are viewing. Build a five-name list in the morning and you can cycle your whole watchlist in seconds instead of hunting the dropdown.
Every Market Profile term with worked examples, at F1 or the corner button. This guide tells you what to do; the glossary tells you what things mean. Keep it open the first week.
The strip along the top is a terminal-style status line. Most people never read it; it answers four questions instantly.
| Item | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| OPEN / PRE-OPEN / CLOSED | Live market state with a colour dot, computed in IST no matter where your computer thinks it is. Green means the auction is running and your profile is still being written. |
| The clock | Real IST time to the second — so you are never caught out by a laptop set to the wrong timezone. |
| Session letter | The most useful item on the bar. The MP letter being written right now, e.g. D (10:45). When you glance at the chart you know instantly which letter is incomplete — and an unfinished letter is not a signal yet. |
| Symbol & theme | The active symbol, and a click-to-toggle DARK / LIGHT theme. Your choice is remembered, and the whole chart redraws in the matching palette. |
| F1 F2 F3 | F1 Glossary, F2 jump to the symbol search, F3 Ask AI. They are also clickable chips. Plus Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac) opens a command palette that searches every feature on the platform — the fastest way to move around. |
Concrete sequences rather than theory. Pick the two that match how you trade.
Mark the three levels that will decide today before the bell.
Open each watchlist name, note yesterday's value area edges and POC, and draw them in. Where the stock opens relative to those lines is the single most predictive piece of information you will get all day — and it costs five minutes.
Decide whether today is a trend day or a range day, then stop guessing.
The first hour is complete, so the IB is final. Narrow IB plus a narrow value area plus a Trend shape means follow it and hold. Wide IB plus a D shape means fade the edges toward the POC. Choosing the wrong mode is what turns a good read into a losing day.
Find a heavy-volume price the market has never come back to test.
An untested VPOC is unfinished business, and it is the cleanest target you can give a trade that is already working. Instead of guessing where to book profit, you are aiming at a price the market has a documented reason to revisit.
See the levels institutions have been defending for weeks.
Day charts show you today's argument; the composite shows you the long-running one. Knowing there is a month-long volume shelf just above price explains why your breakout keeps failing — and stops you taking it a third time.
Let the profile choose the price and the candles choose the moment.
Price arrives at yesterday's VAL. Do not buy the touch — open the candle panel and wait for a 3-minute candle to actually reject the level. Same level, same idea, materially better entry and a much tighter stop.
Build real intuition instead of collecting rules.
Pick a day, cover the right side of your screen, decide what you would have done from the profile alone, then step forward a day and see. Ten repetitions of this teaches you more about value areas than any amount of reading — including this page.
This page is the operating manual for the charts. These cover the rest of the workflow.
Live Intraday Scanner guide — the chart is one stock at a time; the scanner reads all 200+ at once and hands you the names worth charting. Every column, how to stack filters, and 13 ready-made scans.
Live Volume Scanner guide — session-by-session Volume Factor across the market. Use it to check that the level you just found on the chart has real participation behind it.
What is Market Profile and the Market Profile Glossary — TPO, Value Area, POC and Initial Balance from first principles, with worked Nifty examples.
Live Market Profile Charts overview — what the charting platform covers, refresh behaviour, and how it fits with the scanners and alerts.
Without logging in you can explore the charts with limited data — enough to learn the shape, the value area and the controls. Live intraday profiles across 200+ NSE stocks, the volume profile layer, composites, drawing tools and SarthoAI are what you use to trade the day.
Market Profile concepts by J. Peter Steidlmayer & James Dalton. These charts are an analysis and education tool: they describe market structure, they do not predict outcomes or give investment advice. Every level can fail, and value areas are descriptions of the past, not promises about the future — position size and stop-losses are your responsibility. Please trade only with capital you can afford to risk.