P-shaped profile

How the shape forms

A profile plots traded volume by price rather than by time. When the market opens or starts a period low, trades upward with little volume on the way, and then finds a level where both sides are willing to keep trading, the histogram grows a fat node near the top of the range and leaves a thin tail underneath. The result is a P: a narrow stem below, a rounded bulge above.

The thin tail is the part of the move that traded fast. The bulge is where the auction slowed down and volume accumulated, which is the region the market treated as fair for the rest of the period.

• Tail below: low volume per level, price moved through quickly.
• Bulge above: high volume nodes, POC and value area concentrated in the upper part of the range.
• The POC of a P-shaped profile typically sits inside the bulge, well above the midpoint of the range.

How to read it

• The guide on senzoukria.com describes the P-shape as an upward move that found acceptance high, often associated with short covering: sellers who were positioned short buy back and the market accepts the higher prices.
• The tail is not value. Price trading back into the tail means the market is leaving acceptance, which is a different situation from rotating inside the bulge.
• Whether the higher value holds is answered by what happens next, not by the shape alone: a P-shape followed by a period that builds value even higher is a different story from a P-shape that is immediately traded back through.
• Compare with the b-shaped profile, its mirror image, and with the D-shaped (balanced) profile, where value sits in the middle.

In Senzoukria

On the footprint chart, the Volume Profile (session) overlay draws traded volume by price for a chosen period (session, CME day, 1 hour, 4 hours, daily, weekly, rolling 90 or 180 days, visible range or custom), and the Market Profile (TPO) overlay draws Steidlmayer profiles with TPO letters, blocks or bars over a free period (15m, 1H, 4H, D1 or custom). Both make the shape of the distribution visible, so a P-shape appears as a histogram with its widest rows in the upper part of the period. The Session POC (developing) and Session VAH/VAL (developing) overlays show where the point of control and value area sit relative to the range.

On the heatmap screen, the Volume profile panel is built over the Profile history window you set, not the session, so the shape you see there covers that window.

Common mistakes

• Reading a P-shape as a prediction. It describes where volume has traded so far; it does not say whether the higher value will hold.
• Mistaking a thin tail for missing data. A tail is low volume that was actually recorded; a gap where the provider delivered nothing is a different thing and should be shown as unavailable, not as a thin level.
• Judging the shape on an incomplete period. Until the period closes, the profile is still developing and the bulge can migrate.
• Confusing the profile period with the chart timeframe. A P-shape on a session profile and a P-shape on a 15-minute TPO bracket describe different auctions.