Volume Profile — how much was traded at each price

About

A volume profile shows how much was traded at each price. It counts only the part of the chart you can see. Volume is how much was traded: shares for a stock, coins for crypto.

In KAGAMI it is called Volume Profile Visible Range in the Indicators list. On the chart, its short name is VPVR. It is free for every account.

What you see on the chart

A chart is made of bars, also called candles. Each bar covers the same amount of time.

• Sideways bars appear on the right side of the price chart. Each one is a row: a small band of prices.
• A long row means a lot was traded at those prices. A short row means little was traded there.
• Each row has two colours. One part comes from candles that closed at or above their open. The other part comes from candles that closed lower.
• Some rows look stronger, less see-through. Together they are the value area: the prices where most of the trading happened.
• A line marks the POC, the point of control. It is the price row with the most trading.
• It only counts the candles you can see. Move or zoom the chart, and it is drawn again.

How traders often read it

• Many traders read the POC as the price where most trading happened.
• Some traders see long rows as busy prices. Short rows are prices the market passed through quickly.
• Some traders watch how the price behaves near the edges of the value area.
• Some traders compare profiles. They zoom to one day, then to one week, and look at both.

An indicator only describes past trading. It cannot tell you what happens next.

The settings

Point at VPVR at the top left of the chart. Click the gear icon (Settings). The Inputs tab shows:

• Rows Layout — how the rows are made. Number Of Rows (the default) or Ticks Per Row.
• Row Size — with Number Of Rows, how many rows. It starts at 24. More rows make thinner rows and more detail. With Ticks Per Row, it is how many price steps each row covers.
• Volume — Up/Down shows the two colours. Total shows one amount per row. Delta compares the two parts.
• Value Area Volume — the share of all trading the value area holds. It starts at 70 (per cent).

The Style tab holds the colours, the value area and the POC line. It also has three extra lines, off at first: Developing Poc, Developing VA High and Developing VA Low.

When it can mislead

• It changes when you scroll or zoom. Other candles on screen give another profile. Two people looking at different ranges see a different POC.
• Few candles give a rough picture. With only a few candles on screen, the rows are not very telling.
• A candle does not say where inside it the trading happened. The chart spreads each candle's volume across its price range. Long timeframes make this rougher.
• The last candle is still forming. It counts already, so the newest rows still change.
• It is one source, not the whole market. Crypto volume comes from one exchange. US stock volume in KAGAMI may come from one exchange only.
• FX and metals have no central exchange. Their volume counts how often the price changed, not how much money was traded.

Charts are for learning, not advice. Read our Risk Disclaimer.

An example

Open NASDAQ:AAPL on a 15-minute chart, with about two days on screen. These numbers are made up.

1. Say the price moved between 100 and 110 in those two days.
2. The longest row sits around 104. So the POC line is at about 104.
3. The stronger rows run from about 102 to 106. That is the value area.
4. You can read it like this: most of the trading you can see happened between 102 and 106. The most happened near 104.
5. Now scroll back one week. The profile is drawn again for those older candles. It may look quite different.

Technical details

For readers who want the exact rules. Volume Profile Visible Range is the chart's built-in TradingView study. The chart computes it in your browser from the bars KAGAMI sends.

The calculation

1. The bars. It takes the bars from the first to the last bar on screen.
2. The rows. It cuts the range from the lowest low to the highest high into rows. With Number Of Rows, it makes Row Size rows. With Ticks Per Row, each row is Row Size price steps tall (a price step is the smallest move the market allows).
3. Up or down. A bar counts as up when close ≥ open, else as down.
4. Spreading a bar's volume. If a bar's high and low fall in one row, all its volume goes to that row. Otherwise each row gets a share equal to the part of the bar's high–low range inside that row. For example, a bar whose range lies one quarter in a row gives that row one quarter of its volume.
5. The POC. The row with the most volume. Its line sits at the middle of that row. If several rows tie, it takes the one nearest the middle of all the rows.
6. The value area. It starts with the POC row. It looks at the next row below and the next row above, and adds the one with more volume. On a tie it adds the one nearer the POC; if both are as near, the row above. It stops when the next row would take it past Value Area Volume per cent of all the volume. So the value area holds at most that share.
7. The developing lines (off at first) follow the POC, the value-area top and the value-area bottom as each bar is added from left to right. They are drawn as step lines.

KAGAMI's data does not offer the chart a finer timeframe for this study. So the chart builds the profile from the bars of the timeframe you are looking at.

Inputs

The drawing

• The rows grow from the right edge of the chart towards the left. The longest row reaches 30 % of the way across.
• Rows in the value area are drawn at 30 % transparency. The other rows are drawn at 76 %, so they look paler.
• The POC line is solid and 2 pixels wide. It runs across the bars the profile measures.
• The profile is drawn on top of the candles.
• The colours are the chart's own defaults. KAGAMI does not change them.

When values change

• Moving or zooming changes the bars on screen. The whole profile is then computed again.
• The newest bar is still forming. Its volume and range change each time the chart refreshes: about every 15 seconds, or every 5 seconds on a seconds chart.
• Past rows can change too. With Number Of Rows, a new high or low stretches the price range, and every row is cut again.

Timeframes

• The profile uses the bars of the timeframe on screen. On a long timeframe each bar covers a wide price range. Its volume is spread over more rows, so the picture is rougher.
• Seconds timeframes (1, 5, 10, 15 and 30 seconds) exist for crypto only. They reach back about 24 hours.
• US stocks follow US market hours, 09:30 to 16:00 New York time. Crypto trades all day, every day (times in UTC).

KAGAMI's own version

KAGAMI also has its own volume profile, computed on KAGAMI's servers. It is not in the Indicators list. It is drawn only when a link opens KAGAMI with a volume profile already asked for. It has no settings window.

1. The bars. The latest bars the page loads: 500, or fewer when the market has less history. Not the bars on screen.
2. The rows. 24 rows. A link may ask for another number; it is kept between 4 and 200 and cut to a whole number. The range runs from the lowest low to the highest high, cut into equal rows. If every bar has the same price, all the volume lands in one row.
3. Spreading a bar's volume. A bar with zero volume is skipped. Otherwise its volume is shared equally among every row from the row of its low to the row of its high. A bar that touches three rows gives each one a third.
4. The POC. The row with the most volume. If several rows tie, the lowest one. The POC price is the middle of that row.
5. The value area. It starts with the POC row. It compares the next row above with the next row below and adds the one with more volume; on a tie, the row above. It goes on until it holds at least 70 % of all the volume, or no rows are left. So it can hold a little more than 70 %. Its bottom is the bottom of its lowest row; its top is the top of its highest row.
6. Rounding. Row edges, the POC and the value-area edges are rounded to 6 decimals. Row volumes are rounded to 4 decimals.
7. The drawing. One box per row that has volume. Each box ends at the newest bar and reaches to the left. The busiest row reaches back 60 bars' worth of time (one bar's worth = the time between the last two bars). With fewer than 180 bars loaded, it reaches back a third of the bar count instead. Other rows are shorter in proportion, rounded, and at least 1 bar's worth long. The boxes sit behind the candles.
8. The POC line is a dashed line, 1 pixel wide, labelled POC. It runs from the first loaded bar to 5 bars' worth of time past the newest one.
9. Refresh. The page asks for it again each time the chart refreshes, about every 15 seconds. It is computed again over the newest bars, including the bar still forming, and drawn again.

Its colours (the boxes are also drawn with a transparency of 35 % for the POC row and 55 % for the others):

The boxes and the line are locked. You cannot select, move or save them.

Differences from the chart's built-in version

KAGAMI's own version differs from Volume Profile Visible Range in these ways:

• Which bars. KAGAMI's own: the latest 500 bars loaded, whatever is on screen. Built-in: the bars on screen.
• Spreading. KAGAMI's own: equal shares across every row a bar touches. Built-in: shares by how much of the bar's range lies in each row.
• Up and down. KAGAMI's own: one amount per row, no split. Built-in: up and down volume by default.
• Value area size. KAGAMI's own: grows until it holds at least 70 %. Built-in: stops before it would pass the share you set.
• Value area ties. KAGAMI's own: the row above. Built-in: the row nearer the POC, then the row above.
• POC ties. KAGAMI's own: the lowest row. Built-in: the row nearest the middle of all rows.
• Size and place. KAGAMI's own: the busiest row reaches back 60 bars' worth of time, ending at the newest bar, behind the candles. Built-in: 30 % of the chart's width from the right edge, on top of the candles.
• POC line. KAGAMI's own: dashed, 1 pixel, labelled, gold. Built-in: solid, 2 pixels.
• Settings. KAGAMI's own has none. The built-in has the four inputs above.
• Refresh. KAGAMI's own: the server computes it again on each refresh. Built-in: your browser computes it again as bars change or as you move the chart.

Edge cases

• No volume at all. If the bars carry no volume, nothing is drawn. This holds for both versions.
• One very busy row. If the POC row alone holds more than the value-area share, the value area is just that row.
• Every bar at one price. All the volume lands in a single row.
• A bar with high = low puts all its volume in one row.
• Very few bars. The profile still draws, but a few bars say little about where trading clusters. KAGAMI's own version needs at least 2 loaded bars to draw anything.
• Gaps (nights, weekends, a jump at the open) leave prices where no bar traded. Those prices get no row.