Where the footprint shows you volume, TPO shows you time. Each letter block marks one period of the session spent trading at a price. Stack the letters up and the session builds a profile: wide where the market accepted price and did business, thin where it rejected price and moved on. Traders use it to answer one question fast: where is value, and is price above it, below it, or inside it?
Add it to your chart
- Open Indicators in the top bar.
- Search for TPO and click it once.
- Each session renders as its own lettered profile alongside your candles.
The vocabulary, in one pass
- TPO: one Time Price Opportunity, one letter, one period of the session at one price. First period is A, second is B, and so on.
- POC (Point of Control): the price with the most TPOs, the fairest price of the session. OpenMarket outlines it on each profile.
- Value area (VAH / VAL): the band around the POC holding roughly 70% of the session's activity. Above VAH the market is exploring higher prices; below VAL, lower.
- Initial balance: the range of the first periods of the session. A session that never leaves it is balanced; a session that extends far beyond it is a trend session.
- Single prints: prices with just one TPO, left behind by a fast move. Thin structure the market often revisits.
- Poor high / poor low: an extreme where several periods stopped at the same price. The auction ended flat instead of with conviction, which frequently gets repaired later.
How traders actually use it
- Locate value first: above value, look for longs and treat VAH as support on pullbacks; below value, mirror it. Inside value, expect rotation between VAH and VAL and fade the edges.
- Judge acceptance vs rejection: price entering a prior value area and building letters there is acceptance (rotation likely to the far edge). Price poking in and leaving within a period is rejection.
- Hunt poor structure: poor highs, poor lows, and single prints are a to-do list the market tends to work through. They make honest targets.
- Compare sessions: overlapping profiles mean balance and mean reversion; a ladder of higher value areas means trend, and the pullback-to-prior-VAH trade is on.
Make it yours
TPO is the most configurable indicator on the platform, with roughly 80 options: letters or blocks, session choice and custom sessions, core levels (POC, VAH, VAL, mid), prior-session levels, structure markers (singles, poor extremes, initial balance), annotations, and an attached volume profile. The settings reference documents all of it, tab by tab.