---
title: Meet TPO (Market Profile)
description: Read where the market accepts and rejects value with OpenMarket's TPO (Market Profile) indicator — letters, POC, value area, and structure.
---


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?

![TPO profiles on BTCUSDT with POC, value area high and low, and per-price counts](/learn/order-flow/tpo-hero--hero.png)

## Add it to your chart

1. Open **Indicators** in the top bar.
2. Search for **TPO** and click it once.
3. 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](/learn/order-flow/tpo/settings-reference) documents all of it, tab by tab.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Where to go next**

Read the [TPO playbook](/learn/order-flow/tpo/playbook) for the patterns, and keep the [settings reference](/learn/order-flow/tpo/settings-reference) open the first time you tune sessions and levels.
{% endhint %}