The MarketDelta Blog

While Market Profile charts are powerful and popular tools that appeal to many traders, MarketDelta also provides two indicators for viewing profiles on candlestick and Footprint charts. These are the “TPO Indicator” and “Profile Indicator.”

The features of these two indicators at first seem similar, so you may find yourself wondering which to use. For example, with both indicators you can show information for the current day profile, or the previous day profile, or both.

So what is the difference?

The TPO indicator always shows data and profile levels based on 30-minute TPO letter durations. Thus, it closely matches what a true, traditional Market Profile chart shows. If you want to monitor Market Profile levels on your intraday chart, no matter what periodicity your chart is set to, use the TPO indicator. It will show the same value area and POC data as a Market Profile chart, no matter how your chart is organized.

The Profile indicator draws value area and POC levels as well, but it uses the periodicity of the chart to determine the information. This primarily applies to time-based profiles, as opposed to volume-based. The cumulative volume for a price is going to be the same, whether you look at a 5-minute or 1.25 range or 1 minute or 233 tick chart. But the number of bars, and thus the number of times a specific price was charted, will widely vary depending on these periodicities. Thus the time-based profiles in the Profile indicator will not look the same as Market Profile charts unless you are using 30-minute candles or Footprints. Additionally, the Profile indicator offers many other features that are not available in the TPO indicator, such as long-term composites, the ability to split a session into up to three different profiles, and more.

So it really depends on your needs and the type of precision you want to see in your profile results as to which of these two indicators you should use.