Market Profile Period Markers
Setup & Use

Below is the transcript of the video you’ll get access to with your subscription.

Hello folks, this is Ralph. And today I’m going to show you how to set up and use the profile periods study. We’re currently looking at a 5,000 trade chart, e-mini S&P. What that means is that a new candle is plotted whenever 5,000 trades have occurred at the previous candle. One of the things that I struggle with this chart is understanding how much time has actually passed while I’m looking at the chart, because as you can see on the timescale, The bars open and close whenever the 5,000 trades have been met at any particular candle. Since I also use the market profile lot, I want to understand whenever 30 minute period opens and closes, as often new players come in and out of the markets at 30 minute period intervals in also algos tend to run at certain times. So it’s important for me to keep track of those things.

So, let me show you how this study can give you a visual cue as to which period you’re currently on. So let’s add the study, click on charts, study settings, and open the add custom study dialog. Find the profile period study and add it. Let’s open up the settings panel first. So there’s two different ways that the study will give you a visual cue as to which period you’re currently on.

One of the ways that we’ll do this is by adding a letter at the top of each candle, from the market profile letters. And the second one is by highlighting the background of the candle that opens up a new 30 minute period for now. We’ll just add both to the chart and then we’ll add and remove each of them so that you can see how to do it yourself.

So let’s add this study.

Here we go. And zoom out so that you can see things a little bit more clearly.

The blue background that I have here is the overnight session. And this study only works during the regular trading session hours. So as you can see, if I zoom back in,

you can clearly tell which period you’re currently trading. This is K period. This is L period, and this is M period. It also highlights the background of the candle where the new 30 minute period opens. Sometimes it’ll match up with a letter, but other times it won’t because again, this is a 5,000 trade chart.

So say you think that the letters are a little too much and you want to remove them from the chart, but you like the background. Let’s go back to chart, study settings and open up the settings for the study. You can simply change the draw period letter to no

and there you have it. Additionally, if you want it the other way around, you can bring back the letters and then go to sub graphs. And then the new period highlight background, you simply want to change this to ignore.

And there you go. You can customize this study to fit your trading styles. I hope that you find this simple study useful and can incorporate it into your trading. Until next time everyone, Happy Trading!