---
title: TPO playbook
description: The Market Profile patterns worth marking on OpenMarket — value-area rotation, the 80% rule, poor extremes, single prints, and initial balance.
---


TPO rewards a specific habit: read the structure before the session, mark the levels, then let price come to them. These are the profile patterns worth marking, what each one implies, and the standard ways traders act on them.

Same disclaimer as the footprint playbook: structure is context. The profile tells you where the interesting conversations will happen, the footprint and tape tell you who is winning them.

## Trading around the value area

**The base case**: the market spends most of its life rotating inside or near value. When price opens inside the prior value area, the default expectation is rotation: moves from VAH toward POC and VAL, and back. Fading the value area edges toward the POC is the bread-and-butter balanced-market trade.

**The 80% rule**: when price opens outside the prior value area and then re-enters it and holds (classically two periods), the odds favor a full traverse to the other side of value. On OpenMarket, keep prior-session VAH, VAL, and POC visible (Profile tab: prior session levels) so re-entries are impossible to miss.

**Breakout from value**: letters building outside value after a clean exit is acceptance of new prices. Stop fading. The prior VAH or VAL you just left becomes the pullback level.

## Open location: the first read of the day

Where the session opens relative to yesterday's profile sets the tone:

- **Open inside value**: balance expected, rotate the edges.
- **Open outside value but inside range**: mild imbalance; watch whether price accepts back into value (80% rule setup) or builds value where it is.
- **Open outside range**: true imbalance. These are the sessions that trend. Look for the open to be defended (open-drive behavior) and do not lean on mean reversion.

## Poor highs and poor lows: unfinished endings

**What you see**: two or more letters flat at the exact session high or low, instead of a single tapering print. The profile ends in a shelf, not a point.

**What it means**: the auction at the extreme never finished. Buyers (at a poor high) ran out of time rather than sellers showing up with conviction.

**How to trade around it**: poor extremes are magnets on revisits and weak defense when tested. A poor high above you is a target for longs and a reason to distrust shorts initiated right below it. Once repaired (taken out and rejected with a clean tail), the level's job is done.

## Single prints and tails

**What you see**: a run of prices holding a single letter. In the middle of a profile they are single prints left by a fast traverse; at the extremes they are tails left by an aggressive rejection.

**What it means**: single prints mark prices where one side was in such a hurry that no two-sided trade happened. Tails at extremes are strength: someone rejected those prices emphatically.

**How to trade around it**: single-print gaps in the middle of a profile tend to fill; treat them as air pockets on the way to your target. Tails should hold on retest: a revisited tail that does not bounce is telling you the rejection has expired. OpenMarket can mark singles for you (Profile tab: structure markers).

## Initial balance extensions

**What you see**: the initial balance (first-period range) marked on the profile, and the session extending beyond it one side or both.

**What it means**: a session that extends one side of the IB early and keeps building letters there is a trend session in the making. A session poking both sides of the IB without follow-through is a chop session; size down and fade edges.

**How to trade around it**: the IB high and low are the cheapest early session levels you get. Range extension with rising value (watch the developing VAH/VAL) confirms trend; range extension that immediately re-enters the IB is a failed breakout and often travels to the opposite IB extreme.

## Sessions and aggregation

Crypto trades around the clock, so session choice shapes everything on this page. The default sessions work for most, but the custom sessions editor (General tab) lets you profile the windows you actually trade: the US morning, the Asia open, or one profile per week for the bigger map. Merging or splitting sessions redraws the structure, so pick a scheme and keep it consistent; levels only mean something if you derive them the same way every day.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Practice drill**

Each morning, mark three things from yesterday's profile before looking at anything else: the value area, the poorest extreme, and any single-print gaps. Write down what price should do at each if buyers are in control. The evening review of those notes teaches TPO faster than any thread.
{% endhint %}