Hello guys, iam new here but found this website througt google

Iam trying to learn volume profile, and have googled around massve amount of time, but still find it very hard.

Ive looked 4-5 webinars with futurestrader71, but found it very hard to understand, he talks about different tick charts, real trading houers vs others, and have very messy charts in my eyes, iam wondering if you have any place to start from witch cover the basics little more.

I know what everything is and means, like VAH, VPOC, different shapes of profiles, but thats it, and I cant understand how to apply it to trading, since someones says that VPOC act as S/R, while others says that low volume node acts like S/R, and LVN and VPOC is each others opposite.

Ive looked 4-5 webinars with futurestrader71, but found it very hard to understand, he talks about different tick charts, real trading houers vs others.........

I know what everything is and means, like VAH, VPOC, different shapes of profiles, but thats it, and I cant understand how to apply it to trading, since someones says that VPOC act as S/R, while others says that low volume node acts like S/R, and LVN and VPOC is each others opposite.

Hi
Just briefly looking at these points:

Volume profile records the amount of volume that trades at that price level, therefore what type of chart you use, tick chart, time chart or no chart has no influence on the volume profile so just use what you like.

You say you are interested in the ES. The ES is a derivative of the S&P500 stock exchange which trades regular stock market hours only (RTH - 9:30am-4:00pm Eastern Time), and opens and closes at those times. The futures market trades 23 hours per day (ETH), but the vast majority of the volume is traded during the regular hours with the cash stock market so people just simplify and watch those hours and quite often exclude the non RTH hours form their profiles on the charts.

Think about what a High Volume Node or Low Volume Node actually means rather than whether something is support or resistance or not.
If looking at today's/yesterday's/the week's whatever volume profile, if you have an LVN that means that price spent very little time there, or more accurately very little volume traded there, because price moved away from that area quickly.
The opposite is where you have an HVN which means a lot of volume traded in that area and price was comfortable there. The market is an auction, price goes down until it finds buyers to stop it going down and rises with aggressive buyers until it finds people happy to sell at those prices. Two sided trade happens and causes HVNs when buyers and sellers are comfortable trading at a price level.
Therefore price tends to move through or get rejected quickly at earlier LVN areas where as earlier HVN areas tend to attract volume because people were happy there before.
So one may fade a previous LVN area if price moves there and volume slows down and the momentum pressure drops off, and target price coming back into the middle of range again at the HVN.
Or once an HVN has formed and price has consolidated with lots of people are both long and short then there are enough people who are going to need to get out of their shorts by buying if the market starts to push up out of consolidation with conviction and those people realise they are positioned on the wrong side at least in the present short term.

Value areas I tend to ignore. They just mean that 70% percent of the volume traded in that range but that area for today for example could cover a double distribution (one HVN area formed, price dropped out then found buyers and built a second HVN separated by the LVN). The fact that the value area may include that whole area is irrelevant as to how volume trades at the different points. Not to mention the fact that 70% is just a user defined number. 68% is one standard deviation but so what.

So general rules of thumb:
HVN - price volume was comfortable in this area with two sided trade.
LVN - price volume was uncomfortable in this area and moved through it quickly or was rejected away from this area quickly.

And how about all other stuff, like I see futuretrade71 have both daily profiles, and then he have the composite, also there, how to know how much to zoom out? 1yrs of trading range give xxx composite, but if I zoom out so I can see 3 yrs of data, the composite will look totaly different,

and sometimes he have additional profiles thats cpvers covers like 5-10 sessions, so for me, its very hard to understand what to look for or even where to start.

Where did you learn the way you look at profiles? And I hope I dont break any forum rules, but would you want to coach me for some money on skype or something?

Thanks for the kind words.
I don't think that is breaking any forum rules but I won't accept the offer because I am not at the moment trading consistently profitably, hence my choosing "Beginner" as my futures experience level despite having been interested in this stuff and tried lots of things/learned a lot over that time. Related to that, and this isn't meant to sound condescending, but don't just accept any trading advice you receive without really testing it out yourself. I think ideas on money management or general trading ideas are interesting topics but be wary of anybody who makes definitive statements about what works in trading and what doesn't, how successful they are etc. Just because somebody claims there futures experience to be "Master" or "Advanced" doesn't actually appear to mean they are making consistent profits, or any seemingly, trading futures.

So back to the question. I recall FT71 saying his composite profile isn't a set number of days but runs from the last prominent swing. So on the Daily chart below is could be from the low swing to the recent swing high (green arrow). This can be subjective though depending on what you, or he, considers the most relevant swing. I chose the YM for instance because I thought it made a cleaner example and looking at the ES I wasn't sure what to use. He also creates little composite profiles for when the market is consolidating (orange box). In this instance I think Value Area might be useful as one might decide that the market is in an uptrend and it would be good for example to try for long trades at the bottom of value looking for price to come back to the top, or breakout and continue higher.




FT71 has huge amounts of stuff on his charts like you say, along with sector graphs, different timeframes, Bookmap Heatmap for orderflow information etc. When you listen to him it sounds easy: wait for a two deviation move showing commitment, wait for a pullback near the mid, enter and target that recent high/low again. There are lots of journals here where people in the past have joined Stage5, downloaded his templates all ready to go and their morning analysis is comprehensive but they don't make money. The same with Jim Dalton and his Market Profile intensive courses. Good premarket prep and analysis but no profit. Or "The Scalper's Journal/Journey" whatever thread that was very popular last year creating lots of followers who also didn't last long; or journals after people have attended a John Grady "No BS Daytrading" course....The list could go on and on. Good analysis and understanding but they can't: sit on their hands and wait for their trade, follow their method but instead decide things aren't working so add in some new indicator to try to reduce the number of losses, don't follow their rules, have no discipline etc etc.

The idea of trading sounds really easy, you either buy or sell and that's it, but then as you are starting to find it potentially gets exponentially more complicated with all the choices: different markets to trade - equity indexes are different to the energies, treasuries. Are you: long-term trend following, swing trading, daytrading. A lot of the people creating their journals may have what it takes to succeed but give up too soon, or try to get rich quick and blow up, or are trying to trade a method/instrument that doesn't suit them just because it is very popular on whatever forum they are reading, and so on.

Think about those questions (you probably already have), research some methodology and then pick something that makes sense to you and stick with it and give yourself some time. I tend to think in practical terms three things are important: where you want to trade, deciding whether you want to be long or short, and when you want to enter and exit. So for example Volume profile could help with the first, I think Market Profile could help with the first and second (it provides time and direction context as well as the HVN/LVN (Point of Control (POC)/Single Prints).
So using a previous example: price moves up to the top of a volume distribution which you have decided is your trade location, price tries to go through but the volume momentum dries up, trade back in to range; or volume and momentum increase as it approaches the LVN and you enter before the break and cover if momentum volume dies without price getting through. (I prefer Low Volume Area as LVN suggests a dip between two HVNs whereas an acceleration in to a Low Volume Area could be a break out to new prices for the day).
Or conversely as a scalper you might decide you only want to trade inside the value area where price is comfortable and there is two sided trade, and therefore avoid the low volume extremes of range where price could run away from you quickly leading to a larger loss than is acceptable risk.

That is before you start considering money management and trading psychology too. (Not just your own control and adherence to your rules which is discussed a lot, but also an empathy for what your competitors/the people who want to sell when you are looking to buy, are thinking/feeling, are they about to give up or just pausing to build a position before continuing, what will they do if they push for a breakout and can’t get price through the level etc).

I’ve have gone too far off topic. If you read to the end I hope it is food for thought.

You seem to have really good knowledge, but I totaly understand what you are saying, that I shouldn't trust anyone and everyone can seem like a PRO online. But Iam feeling that I need to start somewhere, and I think the biggest problem is since this krypto boom begun, there are alot of amateurs selling corses and using like MT4 volume profile, witch I dont even think is good data, and are EVERYWHERE on youtube, so iam having a really hard time to understand who really knows anything, and who just only talks, But I think this forum have really much potential, and guys like you who have studied futuretrader71, I know from a good soruce, knows what you talks about

The discipline you mentioned is very true, but thats my smallest problem, since ive traded with good result for a while, but my system have lost edge, even due 100% discipline, so iam trying to wider my views on trading strategys.


Iam not an elite member yet, would you recomend me to be it, to get accsess to " the scalpers " journal?


this is maybe a silly question, but If you could restart your learning curve and everything you know about volume profile, how would you do today?
And btw, after your post, I think I have started to understand futurestrades vidoes a little bit more, maybe I should just watch them on replay untill everything start to make sence?