Poor high / poor low
A poor high or poor low is a session extreme where the profile does not taper into a single thin tail but ends flat, with several price levels at the extreme carrying comparable volume or TPO counts. It indicates that the auction was not finished at that extreme: the market stopped there without a clear rejection.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Definition in profile terms
In auction market theory a clean extreme has a tail: a few TPO or low volume levels at the very top or bottom, showing that aggressive participants stepped in and pushed price away. A poor extreme has no such taper. Two or more levels at the high (or low) carry similar volume, the histogram ends as a flat edge, and the profile gives no evidence that the other side responded forcefully there.
The usual reading is that the move ran out of participants rather than being rejected: buyers stopped buying at the high, rather than sellers overwhelming them. Because nothing was settled, the level is often described as unfinished business, although whether it is revisited is not guaranteed.
Poor extreme versus excess
| Feature | Poor high / low | Excess |
|---|---|---|
| Tail at the extreme | Absent: flat edge | Present: thin single levels |
| What it records | Auction stopped without a clear rejection | Aggressive rejection by the other side |
| Usual interpretation | Unfinished; the level may be revisited | Finished; the level marks an accepted boundary |
In Senzoukria
The Market Profile (TPO) overlay on the footprint chart has a Poor high / low toggle in its Structure section. The setting's own hint defines the condition as an extreme held by two or more brackets, without a tail, and calls it an unfinished auction; a companion Single prints & tails toggle marks the opposite case, rows visited by one bracket only, which at an extreme are a buying or selling tail. The Auto levels option merges the last profiles and includes poor highs / lows among the levels it scores, alongside naked POCs, value-area edges, tails and single prints.
A separate, per-bar test exists in the indicators list: Unfinished Auctions (Tape & flow group) marks a bar high whose highest level has no aggressive buyer (buy volume equal to zero, sell volume above zero) and a bar low whose lowest level has no aggressive seller, with a square on the bar extreme. The note in the app states that some platforms use the term for both sides positive at an extreme, that these are different conventions, and that the marker makes no promise of a retest. The TPO poor high and the footprint unfinished auction are different definitions on different objects.
Common mistakes
- Equating the footprint Unfinished Auctions marker (a per-bar bid/ask condition) with the TPO Poor high / low marker (a bracket-count condition on the profile). They are related ideas with different definitions; the app's note on the footprint marker says so explicitly.
- Assuming a poor high will be revisited. It is a description of how the auction ended, not a forecast.
- Calling an extreme poor when the data is incomplete. A missing final bracket or a provider gap can flatten an edge artificially.
- Ignoring the profile period: a poor high on a 30-minute bracket is a much smaller statement than one on a full session.
Related
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a poor high and excess at the high?
- Excess is a thin tail at the extreme: one or two levels with very little volume, showing that the other side rejected the price aggressively. A poor high is the opposite picture: several levels at the top with similar volume and no taper, showing that the move simply stopped. Excess reads as a finished auction; a poor high reads as an unfinished one.
- Does Senzoukria detect poor highs and lows?
- Yes, in two different ways. The Market Profile (TPO) overlay has a Poor high / low toggle whose hint defines the condition as an extreme held by two or more brackets without a tail, and its Auto levels option scores poor highs and lows among the merged levels. The footprint indicator Unfinished Auctions applies a per-bar convention instead: the highest level has no aggressive buyer, or the lowest level no aggressive seller. The app's own note says that marker is not a promise of a retest.
- Why is a poor low sometimes called unfinished business?
- Because the auction at that price did not produce a clear rejection. Sellers stopped selling rather than buyers stepping in forcefully, so nothing was decided there. Traders who use auction market theory keep such levels as references, while acknowledging that the market is not obliged to return to them.