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What Is a Volume Profile

A volume profile is the volume of a span of time sorted by the price it was traded at: a row for each step of price, as long as the volume traded inside that step, with the longest row the point of control and the band that holds seven tenths of the volume the value area. This paper shows you gold's July 2025 profile drawn from real hourly bars, the idea as a wall of pigeonholes, the two readings laid over the daily chart, one hour's volume shared across the steps it touched, and the settings on your platform.

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

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A month's volume, sorted by price

A volume profile takes the volume of a span of time and sorts it by price instead of by time. Here is gold's July 2025: 527 hours between the month's low of 3268.10 and its high of 3438.90, cut into five-dollar steps. Each row is one step, and its length is how much was traded inside that step during the month. The longest row is 3335 to 3340, with 308,000 of the month's 3.49 million: the point of control, the price where the most trading happened. The shaded band from 3295 to 3360 holds seven tenths of the month's volume, and that band is called the value area.

A wall of pigeonholes

Picture a wall of pigeonholes. Each hole is a step of price, higher prices in the upper holes and lower prices in the lower ones. Every trade is a letter, and it is posted into the hole for the price it was done at, whatever the time of day. At the end of the month you count the letters in each hole. The fullest hole is the point of control, and the holes with a letter or two are prices the market passed through without much business. The profile is that wall seen from the front.

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