Market Profile

Market Profile is the original auction-market framework developed at the Chicago Board of Trade in the 1980s. It plots price vertically and uses letters (A, B, C, ...) to represent 30-minute time-period occurrences at each price. One letter per cell price touched during each period. producing a distribution whose shape encodes the session's behavior. The resulting day types (Normal, Trend, Double-Distribution, Neutral, Non-Trend) describe the character of the session and suggest the most probable behavior going forward.

The strategies in this category trade the key Market Profile reference levels. IB Breakout trades a decisive break of the Initial Balance (the range set in the first hour of the session). A strong directional day typically ignores the IB boundaries, while a range day respects them. MP Initial Balance Failure fades a failed IB breakout that returns inside, signaling a range-day pattern. MP Poor High Short trades "poor highs". Single-print levels above the prior session's value area that didn't attract rotation, signaling unfinished business and future downside. Market Profile shares vocabulary with Volume Profile (Value Area, Point of Control) but tracks time rather than volume. It remains a legitimate institutional framework on liquid futures, particularly for understanding whether to fade or follow intraday moves.