And if so, can you give me some pointers?! I've read a few books now and watched a few long video courses too, but each time, I go to my screen, and realise i've kind of learn nothing ACTIONABLE! I can tell you how te VPOC is calculated and what it means, same with value areas, I can name volume profile shapes and can tell you if we had an open drive yesterday, or whether todays profile is a balanced one etc, but none of it really helps me in the moment. Funnily enough, even the people teaching this say 'this isn't a system. It's just a way of looking at the market' which makes me wonder if there even IS any sort of point in using it?! Coaches always say things like 'See? We bounced yesterday from the VAH of prior day. Easy money!!'', but that same setup failed the day before. And the next day it it bounces from near the POV of prior day instead, and again the coach says 'easy money!'. But why didn't he buy at VAH? What i'm saying is that, there's lots of levels and price will react to one of them of course, but we never know which one? And in terms of volume profile, it's similar. I can't really see how much of an edge can be got. I know about high volume nodes and low volume nodes etc. Balance areas. Profile shapes etc. People claim to use volume profile to give them a strong bias and for market context and to tell 'who's in control' etc, but it all just feels like hindsight stuff from coaches so far. Anyone able to help me out? I don't wanna give up on it just yet lol
Subscribed. I liked Daltons books and his accurate description of the market place as a continuous two-way auction. He also differentiated between various market sessions/day types where I've done something similar in my own private research. I don't use MP myself, but it's one of the things I might want to look further into as soon as I have the time to do so. I've heard about some profitable traders who claims it to be useful, so I try to keep an open mind. As for levels, the key is to be aware of them and then make decisions when the market approaches said level. But if you find yourself in a situation where you've got levels closely clustered all over your chart that's not a good situation either and the market may bounce off one of them just by randomness.
Obviously, it is because the people you are describing are full of shit. I am sure Steidlmayer and market profile had its time in the 80s. The symptom really of a conman in trading is using outdated tools and telling you that markets never change so these outdated tools still work. Maybe even add some magical thinking that they work better than modern tools.
I used to trade the NQ with tick bar charts, and volume profile. I was watching for one specific pattern to make a quick trade during no news markets. Since we now can see volume profile and other tools attached to the DOMs, I use charts differently and keep an eye on the DOM. I never used the value areas, except for specific market volatility like the one that we had yesterday. Hope this helps.
You are right, it's all hindsight information offering nothing actionable. Might trigger a few people on here but "Auction Market Theory" is a fad, it just gives these vendors and educators another degree of freedom to label unverified market concepts and it's no coincidence that it's popularity started at the same time as this whole fintwit education space. One-Timeframing, Value Area Hi/Lo, Overnight inventory, Point of control, balance/imbalance.. all labels to describe the left hand side of the chart. An example is Dalton's "P-Profile" which supposedly indicates "short-covering" and not real buying. All a P-profile tells you is there's been an aggressive move higher followed by consolidation (something even a regular chart will tell you)... well by the time the P-profile is done/defined and you haven't participated in the momentum action that forms the stem of the p, then something is wrong with your trading. Also the idea that a p-profile indicates short covering and not real strength is bullshit. You can EASILY test an X-day returns on market action after a p-profile.. and if you constantly form a short bias based on this Dalton concept in say the S&P, I'm guessing you are not going to do very well. I guess that's the problem with most the techniques you find available on the net, they always try to put labels on the market when it is essentially a chaos system of market participants who provide and take liquidity at any given time.
Market profile, market internal indicators and technical indicators are just tools that one can use to figure out the odds of a winning trade. However, if you don't understand how market structure or price action works, these tools are just useless. I bet you that those who spent years or even over a decade on pursuing holy grail indicators are still struggling to trade profitably these days because they have no idea why those tools work in some market conditions, but not in others.
I think you should try out the concept on the demo markets. Demo trades are like the key to actual trading and implementing knowledge in the markets.