Volume Profile Composite | NT8

Included in All Access: one membership gives you this tool plus the full HTech NinjaTrader 8 suite.

A NinjaTrader 8 volume profile for any stretch of history you choose

A time-based chart tells you where price went. It does not tell you where the trading actually happened. A volume profile turns a stretch of the chart on its side and measures how much volume traded at every price, so the prices the market kept coming back to stand out from the ones it passed straight through.

That is where the levels come from. The Point of Control is the price that traded the most volume, the fairest price in the range. The value area is the band around it, by default 70 percent of the range’s volume, where the bulk of the business got done. Its high and low edges are where the market stopped agreeing, which is why traders watch them when price comes back.

Volume Profile Composite builds one NinjaTrader 8 volume profile over exactly the stretch of history you want to study. Today, this week, the last two months, the whole contract, the entire chart, or the span between two dates you pick. One profile, one set of levels, over the range that matters to you.

Set how far back the profile reaches

Pick a period, then pick how many prior periods to add to it. Zero profiles the current period on its own. Six on a daily setting reaches back six trading days, and weekends do not count against you: Saturday is not a trading day and Sunday belongs to Monday. Six on a weekly setting reaches back six weeks instead. The count runs to ten, because past ten days you are better served switching the period to weekly than stacking more days.

Once it is set, the window looks after itself. As each new day or week begins, the profile re-anchors and slides forward, so a six-day lookback stays a six-day lookback without you touching it.

Read the histogram, then the levels

A NinjaTrader 8 volume profile is only as good as the levels you read from it. The histogram shows relative activity at each price in the selected range. The Point of Control is the fattest row. Value Area, VAH, VAL, VWAP, previous close, profile high, low, and midpoint turn that profile into levels you can keep visible as price moves.

Study a finished stretch without today bleeding into it

Sometimes the range you care about is over. Turn on historical only and the developing period drops out, leaving the completed range on its own: last week’s profile without this week’s trading pulling on it, or yesterday’s without today’s. A second yellow line appears to mark the end, so the profile is fenced at both ends and you can see exactly what it covers.

When you want an exact window rather than a rolling one, set a start date and an end date and the profile holds to it.

How Composite differs from Sessions

Both draw the same NinjaTrader 8 volume profile from the same trades, and the difference is only where the range begins and ends. Sessions cuts the chart at each session boundary and profiles every session it finds. Composite ignores boundaries and profiles one continuous stretch, however long you make it. Traders commonly run both: the sessions for structure day by day, the composite for the bigger picture sitting behind them.

Show only the levels you use

A chart toolbar icon puts the profile’s controls one click away. Switch off the levels you do not trade from, hide the histogram and keep the lines, or hold the lines to the width of the histogram and extend them across the chart when you want them as references. Middle-click the icon to hide the whole indicator at once, and middle-click again to bring it back.

Make the profile fit the chart

Put the histogram on the left or the right, set its width, and choose Classic, Heat, or HeatMap shading with the colors and opacity you want. Set the value area percentage, shade the low-volume prices, and lift the summary block off the bottom of the chart when something else is sitting there.

Composite follows the trading hours template on your chart’s data series, and it can override it. You can run extended-hours bars and still profile the regular-hours range.

Good fit for

• Reading one continuous stretch of history, a week, a couple of months, or a whole contract.
• Workflows built on POC, value area, VWAP, previous close, high, low, and midpoint levels.
• Studying a finished move on its own, with the developing period kept out of the profile.