Set Up TPO Market Profile Charts in Tradovate
A TPO chart shows you where price spent its time, not only where it went. Tradovate builds this straight into its charts, so there's nothing to buy or license separately.
A TPO chart, Time Price Opportunity, what most people just call a market profile, shows you where price spent its time, not only where it went. If you trade auction theory, the point of control and the value area are the levels you actually watch. Tradovate builds this straight into its charts, so there's no add-on to buy and nothing to license separately. Here's how to flip a chart over to a profile and get it reading the way you want.
Quick note: labels and icon positions shift a little between platform updates, so if a menu name below looks slightly different on your screen, grab the closest match rather than assuming the feature moved.
Set Up TPO Market Profile Charts: Step-by-Step
Open a Chart and Load Your Symbol
Add a fresh chart to your workspace, use the new-module (plus) icon or the module list, and type in the futures contract you want to study. Stick to the active front-month contract (ES, NQ, CL, GC, whatever you trade). Profiles are only as useful as the data behind them, so you want a liquid, currently-trading symbol.
Switch the Chart Type to TPO
On the chart toolbar, open the chart-type control, it's the icon that shows the current style (candlesticks by default), and choose the TPO / Market Profile option. You can reach the same setting through the chart's gear/settings menu under the price-action style. As soon as it flips, each vertical column of letters or blocks becomes one profile of trading activity.
Choose Letters or Blocks and Set the Size
In the TPO settings, decide how each period draws. Letters (A, B, C…) each mark a 30-minute slice of the session, which is handy when you want to see when a level printed. Blocks are cleaner if you only care about the shape. Set the TPO size to Auto so the profile rescales as you zoom instead of clipping. There's a master color control for the whole profile, and a per-letter-box option if you want each period tinted separately, useful, but you'll be recoloring letters by hand once you turn it on.
Set Up Your Sessions
By default the profile can lump the overnight and regular session into one blob, which hides the story. Split them. Create a regular-hours session and a separate overnight/after-hours session, and give each its own start and stop time plus a starting letter, lowercase letters for the overnight session is an easy visual tell. The start times are fully configurable, so match them to the exchange session for the product you're trading rather than copying someone else's clock. Session hours vary by contract, so confirm them for your instrument.
Turn On Point of Control and the Value Area
This is the part that earns the chart its keep. The Point of Control (POC) is the price the market traded at most during the session. Enable it, pick a color, and decide whether it should extend to the right, an untouched POC dragged into the future makes a clean support/resistance line. The Value Area is the band around the POC where most of the session's activity happened (the classic market-profile convention is about 70% of it). Set its distance/width, its color, and whether it draws as a shaded highlight or as a bar alongside the profile. If you want the full auction picture, you can layer the Volume Profile on top so time and volume sit on the same chart.
Set Autofit and Save a Template
Profiles get tall fast, so autofit keeps them in frame. Open the chart Settings menu and set Auto-Fit to On (fits the bars and indicators as you zoom and scroll) or Bars Only (fits the bars but lets indicators run off-screen); leave it Off if you prefer to scale by hand. Either way, you can double-click the price axis anytime to snap the chart back to fit. Once it all looks right, save the whole layout as a template so every new profile chart opens the same way, sessions, colors, POC and all.
That's the whole setup. Give it a session or two of screen time first, profiles read differently from candles, and the edge is in watching how price accepts or rejects the POC and value-area edges.
Automate What Happens at Your Levels
Once your levels are drawn, you don't have to babysit every entry. PickMyTrade can fire your Tradovate orders automatically from TradingView alerts, so when price hits the POC or the edge of value, your trade is already placed.
Trade Your Levels Automatically
Once your POC and value-area levels are drawn, let PickMyTrade fire your Tradovate orders automatically from TradingView alerts.
Start Your Free 5-Day TrialThis guide is for educational and informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or trading advice. Trading futures and other leveraged products carries a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. PickMyTrade is an independent third-party automation platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Tradovate, Inc. "Tradovate" and all related names, logos, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Platform features and steps change over time, so always confirm the current process in the official Tradovate platform and documentation before acting.