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How to Read a Volume Profile

Reading a volume profile is reading four things: the longest row, which is the point of control; the band that holds seven tenths of the volume, the value area; the thick shelves, where the market lingered and did business; and the thin bands, prices it crossed in a few hours. This paper shows you gold's September 2025 profile drawn from real hourly bars with all four marked, the idea as a lane and a square, the readings put back on the daily chart, what one hump or stacked humps say about a month, and the Style tab on your platform.

Difficulty
Advanced
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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Four things on the profile

A profile is read for four things. Here is gold's September 2025, a month in which the price rose from 3446 to 3859. The longest row, 3645 to 3650 with 318,000, is the point of control: the price where the most business was done. The bracket from 3610 to 3810 is the value area, the band that holds seven tenths of the month's volume. The thick shelf from 3630 to 3690 is where the price spent 213 hours. The two thin bands, 3595 to 3610 and 3700 to 3710, are prices the market crossed in fourteen hours and in five. Everything on a profile is one of those four.

A lane and a square

Picture a lane that opens into a square and narrows again. Where people stand about, in the square, the crowd is dense; where they walk straight through, in the lane, it is thin. A profile is that map turned on its side, and the crowd is every trade of the month. A thick shelf is a square: the market stood about at those prices and did business there. A thin band is a lane: the market walked through those prices and did little on the way. That is the whole of what thick and thin mean.

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