Market Profile vs Volume Profile: Which one is a better tool?There is an ongoing discussion within the trading community about which tool is better for analyzing market behavior: Market Profile (MP) or Volume Profile (VP). The former was popularized by Jim Dalton in his book "Mind Over Markets," while the latter has many advocates as well, including Peter Reznicek (aka ShadowTrader). With the release of the new "Time Price Opportunities" (TPO) indicator by TradingView, we can now closely examine the disparities between the two and explore which one works better.
For starters, I won't delve into explaining what Market Profile is and all its related artifacts (e.g., TPO, single-prints, poor high/low, etc.). TradingView has done a commendable job explaining key concepts in the indicator description. For those seeking more, Jim Dalton's "Markets in Profile" is a recommended resource, an easier and more up to date reading than the original book. Additionally, there are numerous free webinars available on YouTube.
Both MP and VP serve similar purposes:
1. Assess day character by analyzing shape of intraday distribution (price-time/price-volume)
2. Identify important levels that are not visible on the standard bar chart (VAH, VAL, POC)
3. Spot structural weaknesses and anomalies.
The key difference is in the basic building block: Market Profile uses time at certain price level whereas Volume Profile uses volume.
Let’s look at AMEX:SPY chart to explore the differences
What stands out is that intraday distributions are nearly identical. There are slight differences in key levels (VAH, VAL, POC) but they are negligible. Note how on Wednesday, the price first retests Tuesday's VAH, then Monday's VAL, then again Tuesday's VAH. After confirming support, it rallies up the next day.
From the perspective of the stated goals, we can efficiently achieve the first two, regardless of the tool we use. The third goal is a bit tricky and requries a seperate long discussion. So I won't dwell on it here
In overall, we can see that Market and Volume profiles are pretty much alike and it doesn’t make much difference which one you’ll be using.
Or does it? So far, we looked at the regular hours chart (RTH). What about futures and similar instruments that trade 24 hours? Let's look at CME_MINI:NQ1! chart
Here, the difference in distributions and levels is much more pronounced. The best example is Friday where not only POCs are completely misaligned but even the shapes of distribution (MP is more like a bullish p-shape, whereas VP is a bearish trend day).
The disparity in distributions is explained by the difference in volume traded during regular hours (high volume) and extended hours (low volume). Due to this asymmetry, Volume Profile is always heavily skewed towards RTH. Meanwhile, Market Profile is session-neutral, giving the same weight to overnight and regular hours TPOs.
Understanding of disparity doesn’t answer question of which tool is better. For example, when it comes to key levels, price sometimes respects MP levels and sometimes VP ones. My take is that we need to pay attention to both when they are pronounced. Good example is Tuesday’s prominent MP POC. Although it was built up overnight on low volume, it was revisited the day after and acted as resistance.
To conclude:
For tickets that trade primarily in the regular session (or if you look on RTH session chart only) there is no difference whether to use Market or Volume profile. Both provide same information. (note that volume data on lower timeframes depends on your broker and/or whether you buy real-time data from exchange; reliability of volume data is a separate discussion topic).
If you’re trading 24h instruments I find more useful using MP as it can give important information about non-regular low-volume sessions. For RTH, it will still give the same results as VP. You can also use a combination of two but then you’ll face a challenge of reconciling difference in distribution shape (like the Friday example). As there is no clear answer how to do it, I recommend sticking to one tool at a time.
P.S. I have not done any research on very low timeframe (<5m) for intraday accumulations/distributions. As MP was originally developed to analyze day character (Jim Dalton suggests using 30m TPO) it might not be well suited for lower timeframes (e.g. if you trade within 1h range), and this is the area where VP has advantage. Another point to consider is that currently TradingView provides a wider range of VP tools, incl fixed range, anchored, etc…
