Updated
Vertical Volume Pro [MarkitTick]
๐ก Vertical Volume Pro reimagines how traders read participation across a trend by rendering volume not as a single horizontal profile hugging the edge of the screen, but as a series of upright volume columns planted directly beneath the price bars that produced them. Instead of asking where the most volume traded across an entire session, it asks a sharper and more actionable question: within the current structural leg of the market, when did conviction arrive, who was behind it, and where did participation thin out into vacuum? The tool anchors itself to live market structure, self-selecting the origin of every measurement to the swing that began the current move, and then it dissects the volume that flowed from that origin into a rich map of dominant zones, exhaustion gaps, estimated large-participant footprints, and an anchored fair-value reference weighted toward outsized activity. The result is a single overlay that fuses market-structure awareness, granular volume anatomy, and participation-quality estimation into one continuously updating picture, giving traders a way to see the texture of a move rather than just its price path.
โจ Originality and Utility
โ A Structural Anchor Instead of a Static Window
Most volume tools begin measuring from an arbitrary fixed point โ a session open, a rolling lookback, or a manually dragged handle that goes stale the moment the market moves on. Vertical Volume Pro instead ties its measurement origin to the market's own structure. It continuously watches for shifts in trend character and, when a meaningful break occurs, it re-anchors its entire measurement window to the swing that launched the new leg. This means the volume anatomy you see always describes the move currently in play, not a leftover window from a regime that has already ended. The anchor is not a decoration; it is the spine of the entire tool, and every metric downstream inherits its relevance from it.
โ Vertical Columns as a New Visual Grammar
By standing volume upright beneath the bars that generated it, the tool preserves the one dimension a traditional sideways profile discards: time. A horizontal profile tells you a price level was heavily traded but hides when that trading happened. Vertical columns keep the temporal order intact, so a trader can see whether heavy participation clustered at the start of a leg, punctuated its middle, or arrived only at exhaustion near the end. This temporal fidelity is what makes the downstream concepts โ consolidation groups, exhaustion gaps, and density clustering โ possible in the first place.
โ Participation-Quality Estimation, Honestly Framed
The tool goes beyond raw volume to estimate the character of who was trading. It surfaces an estimate of outsized single prints versus ordinary flow, flags absorption and repeated-refill footprints, and weights a fair-value line toward the heaviest activity. Crucially, it frames every one of these as a statistical estimate derived from candle volume behavior, never as confirmed order-origin data. This honesty is itself a differentiator: it delivers the interpretive power traders want from participation analysis while refusing to overpromise a certainty that no chart-based tool can legitimately provide.
โ One Overlay, Many Lenses
Rather than forcing a trader to stack four or five separate scripts, the tool consolidates structural anchoring, volume grouping, gap detection, large-print flagging, absorption sensing, iceberg-run recognition, a whale-weighted rating system, an anchored fair-value line, and a live metrics panel into a single coherent overlay. Each lens can be toggled independently, so the same tool serves a fast scalper wanting only the dominant zone and a methodical swing trader wanting the full anatomy.
๐ฌ Methodology and Concepts
โ Structural Anchoring and Trend State
The foundation of the tool is its reading of market structure. It tracks the most recent meaningful swing high and swing low and monitors whether price decisively reclaims or breaks them. When price closes beyond a governing swing, the tool interprets this as a change in the prevailing direction and re-anchors the active measurement range to the swing point that seeded the new move. This produces a clear trend state โ bullish when the market has broken structure to the upside, bearish when it has broken to the downside โ and the age of the current anchor, expressed in bars, tells you how mature the present leg has become. A trader can choose a Micro sensitivity that reacts to minor swings for scalping, or a Macro sensitivity that responds only to larger cycle turns for position-oriented work. A manual anchor mode is also available for those who prefer to pin the measurement to a specific date rather than let structure decide.
โ Vertical Volume Distribution
Within the active range, the tool captures fine-grained volume from a lower timeframe and stands it upright beneath the price bars. Each column reflects the participation that occurred at that point in the leg. A trader reads tall columns as moments of conviction and short columns as moments of hesitation. Because time is preserved, the sequence of columns reveals the rhythm of the move โ whether it was front-loaded with commitment, evenly participated, or driven late by a burst of activity.
โ Consolidation Groups
Rather than leaving the eye to interpret dozens of individual columns, the tool identifies stretches where participation clusters into a coherent block and presents them as grouped zones. Each group reflects a region of the leg where meaningful volume accumulated together. Groups let a trader instantly perceive where the market spent its energy, and the single heaviest group is highlighted as the dominant zone โ the region that anchored the most participation across the entire move and therefore the most consequential area to watch on any retest.
โ Exhaustion Gaps
Just as important as where volume concentrates is where it evaporates. The tool exposes low-participation stretches at the edges of the volume body and interprets them directionally: thin regions above the concentrated activity are read as overhead vacuum that can act as resistance, while thin regions below are read as underlying vacuum that can act as support. These gaps mark the price territory the market crossed with little commitment, which is often where price moves quickly when revisited.
โ Temporal Density Clustering
Two groups can hold identical volume yet mean very different things depending on how tightly that volume was packed in time. The tool quantifies the degree to which a group's participation is concentrated into a narrow window of active bars versus spread thinly across a wide span. Groups whose activity is tightly compressed can be flagged as temporal clusters, distinguishing a sudden concentrated burst from a slow, diffuse accumulation โ a distinction that carries real interpretive weight for anticipating follow-through.
โ Estimated Large-Participant Split
The tool separates the estimated footprint of outsized single prints from the estimated footprint of ordinary flow within each group. It does this by referencing a rolling percentile of recent activity, so the definition of an outsized print adapts to whether the market is currently quiet or volatile rather than being fixed to a single range. Each group can then reveal what share of its volume came from these outsized prints, and a group whose outsized share crosses a chosen dominance level is colored to reflect that large-participant character. This is explicitly an estimate drawn from volume behavior, not a confirmed identification of institutional trades.
โ Absorption Footprint
Absorption describes the classic tell of disguised accumulation or distribution: a large slug of volume enters while price barely moves, as if an unseen participant is quietly soaking up everything offered. The tool flags prints that combine disproportionately large volume with a disproportionately small price range, surfacing moments where heavy activity failed to move price and thereby hinting at a hidden actor absorbing flow.
โ Iceberg Refill Runs
An iceberg footprint appears as a sequence of adjacent prints with near-identical volume clustered at the same price level, the signature of a hidden order being repeatedly refilled as it is filled. The tool recognizes these runs, marks their completion, and can bracket the full span of the refill sequence with a count of how many prints participated. It can further read the net directional lean of the run โ net-buying runs are interpreted as estimated accumulation and placed below the sequence, net-selling runs as estimated distribution and placed above, while balanced runs remain neutral. A tolerance for what counts as neutral prevents marginal imbalances from being over-interpreted.
โ Whale Weight Rating
To help a trader rank groups at a glance, the tool assigns a one-to-three-star rating to each group based on its absolute large-participant weight โ the outsized share multiplied by the group's total volume โ measured against the strongest such group in the range. This deliberately rewards true weight over mere percentage: a group with a moderate outsized share of an enormous column can outrank a group with a high outsized share of a tiny one, so the stars reflect real participation heft rather than a misleading ratio.
โ Anchored Institutional Fair Value
The tool exposes an anchored volume-weighted fair-value line built exclusively from the prints it estimates to be outsized, anchored to the active range origin. This line approximates the average price at which estimated large-participant volume engaged with the market. When price trades above this line, the market sits at a premium to that estimated fair value โ a potential distribution zone; when price trades below it, the market sits at a discount โ a potential accumulation zone. The live distance between price and this line, expressed as a percentage, gives a running read on how stretched the market has become relative to where the heavy money is estimated to have participated.
โ Net Delta and Range Statistics
Alongside the visual anatomy, the tool maintains running statistics for the active range: the net directional balance of volume expressed as a percentage of total participation, the total volume captured, the price span of the range, the average participation per print, and the duration of the leg in bars. These give a trader a compact quantitative summary to complement the visual read.
๐จ Visual Guide
โ The Vertical Columns and Groups
The core of the display is a field of upright volume elements planted beneath price. In grouped mode, coherent blocks of participation appear as shaded boxes spanning the bars that formed them, with the single heaviest group standing out in its dominant color. In raw mode, each unit of participation appears as its own vertical line, with the tallest drawn thicker and in the dominant hue. Labels sit atop each element showing either its share of total range volume or its raw traded volume, and adjacent labels can be staggered in height so they never collide when columns crowd together. Very small columns can keep their bar while hiding their label to keep the chart clean.
โ The Dominant Zone
The heaviest group is framed by a pair of dashed boundary lines with a soft fill between them, marking the price-time region that anchored the most participation in the entire leg. This is the visual centerpiece โ the area a trader most wants to see defended or broken on a retest.
โ Exhaustion Gap Shading
Thin-participation regions at the edges of the volume body are shaded in two directional colors: one hue marks overhead vacuum read as resistance, the other marks underlying vacuum read as support, each carrying its own labeled share of range volume and its own text color so the two are never confused.
โ Participation-Split Coloring
When the large-participant split is active, group boxes and their labels take on distinct colors depending on whether estimated outsized activity or ordinary flow dominates that group, and the label appends a compact whale-share readout. Temporal clusters receive their own accent border and marker color so a concentrated burst is immediately distinguishable from a diffuse group.
โ Footprint Markers
Distinct emoji-led markers flag the specialized footprints: one marks prints exceeding an independent absolute activity threshold, one marks absorption prints, and one marks completed iceberg runs. Iceberg runs can additionally be wrapped in a span bracket with end ticks and a central print-count label, and their marker color shifts to signal estimated accumulation, distribution, or a neutral balance. Each marker carries a tooltip with the underlying figures for a closer look.
โ Whale Star Ratings
Beneath qualifying groups, a vertical stack of one to three stars renders the group's relative large-participant weight, with earned stars filled and unearned positions shown at reduced opacity, plus a tooltip stating the exact weighting.
โ The Anchored Fair-Value Line and Label
The anchored institutional fair-value line runs horizontally from the range origin to just beyond the latest bar, terminating in a label that states the line's value, whether price sits at a premium or discount, and the exact percentage distance. The label's color reflects the premium or discount state at a glance.
โ The Metrics Panel
A compact monospace panel, positionable in any chart corner, presents a live readout of the tool's state: the structural trend, the anchor mode and age, the price range and total volume, an activity-buffer gauge, the dominance share, the render mode, the estimated whale dominance, net delta, absorption and iceberg counts, the outsized-print threshold, the dominant-zone span, the structural timeframe, average participation per print, the range duration, the anchored fair-value figure, and the current premium-or-discount status. Several rows include block-style gauges whose fill and color scale with the underlying reading, turning numbers into an at-a-glance strength meter.
๐ How to Use
โ Step One โ Choose Your Anchoring
Decide whether the tool should follow structure automatically or pin to a date you choose. For most workflows, leave it in automatic mode and select Micro sensitivity for intraday and scalping work or Macro sensitivity for swing and position work. If you are studying a specific historical episode, enable the manual anchor and set your start and, optionally, end dates.
โ Step Two โ Read the Structural State
Glance at the panel to confirm the prevailing trend and how mature the current leg is. A young anchor age means the move is fresh and the volume anatomy is still forming; a large anchor age means the leg is well developed and its dominant zone is well established.
โ Step Three โ Locate the Dominant Zone
Find the framed dominant zone โ the region that anchored the most participation. Treat it as the leg's center of gravity: on a pullback, watch whether price stabilizes there or slices through it, as that behavior often distinguishes continuation from reversal.
โ Step Four โ Map the Gaps
Note the exhaustion gaps above and below the concentrated activity. These vacuum regions are where price tends to travel quickly when revisited, and they frame natural areas where support or resistance is thin.
โ Step Five โ Weigh Participation Quality
Consult the whale-share readouts, the star ratings, and the footprint markers. A dominant zone that is also whale-dominant and highly rated carries more interpretive weight than one built on ordinary flow. Absorption and iceberg markers highlight moments where hidden activity may have been at work.
โ Step Six โ Reference the Fair-Value Line
Use the anchored fair-value line as an equilibrium reference. Price at a premium suggests the market is extended above where heavy activity engaged; price at a discount suggests it is trading below that level. Combine this with the dominant zone and gaps to frame entries, targets, and invalidations.
โ Step Seven โ Automate with Alerts
Attach alerts so the tool notifies you when a new dominant zone forms, when absorption is detected, or when price flips to a premium or discount relative to the fair-value line, letting you monitor multiple markets without watching each chart.
โ๏ธ Inputs and Settings
โ Core Settings
โ Filters
โ Vertical Volume Settings
โ Whale Rating
โ Institutional AVWAP
โ Dashboard
โ Alerts
โ Colors
๐ Deconstruction of the Underlying Scientific and Academic Framework
โ Volume as the Language of Conviction
The tool sits in the lineage of volume-based market analysis that traces back to the tape-reading tradition and to the foundational work of Richard Wyckoff, whose framework of accumulation and distribution phases treated volume as the primary evidence of intent behind price. The distinction the tool draws between concentrated participation and thin vacuum echoes Wyckoff's insistence that effort, measured in volume, must be weighed against result, measured in price movement โ the very comparison that underpins the absorption concept, where large effort producing little result signals a hidden actor at work.
โ Volume Distribution and Value Theory
The idea of mapping where participation concentrates draws on the volume-distribution thinking popularized by market-profile theory, associated with the work of J. Peter Steidlmayer, which frames the market as constantly searching for areas of accepted value defined by where trade concentrates versus where it is rejected. Vertical Volume Pro inherits this value-search premise but re-expresses it along the time axis rather than the price axis, so that the dominant zone functions as a temporally aware analogue to a high-participation value area, and the exhaustion gaps function as analogues to the low-participation extremes the market moves through quickly.
โ Anchored Volume-Weighted Fair Value
The anchored fair-value reference is grounded in the theory of the volume-weighted average price, a benchmark long used to define the participation-weighted centroid of trading over a defined window. By anchoring this benchmark to a structural origin and weighting it toward estimated outsized activity, the tool extends the standard VWAP concept in the spirit of anchored-VWAP methodologies, producing a reference that estimates the fair value seen by the heaviest participants rather than by the average of all flow. The premium-and-discount interpretation of price relative to this reference reflects the mean-reversion intuition embedded in benchmark-execution theory, where trading materially away from the participation-weighted centroid is treated as a stretched condition.
โ Order Concealment and Microstructure
The absorption and iceberg concepts are rooted in market-microstructure research on how large participants conceal intent to minimize their market impact โ the study of hidden and iceberg orders that reveal themselves only through their footprint in the trade record. The recognition of repeated near-identical prints at a stable price level as evidence of a refilled hidden order reflects the microstructure understanding that a large resting interest, when broken into slices, leaves a statistically distinctive signature even when the full order is never visible on the book. Framing these as estimates rather than certainties respects the core limitation of the field: from aggregated candle data one can infer a footprint but never confirm the order behind it.
โ Regime Awareness and Structural Breaks
The tool's habit of re-anchoring to structural breaks connects to the broader literature on regime change and structural breaks in financial time series, where the recognition that a series' governing behavior has shifted is treated as essential to any measurement that follows. By resetting its measurement window at each break, the tool avoids the well-documented error of averaging across regimes and instead keeps every statistic conditioned on the currently prevailing state.
โ Adaptive Thresholding
The choice to define outsized activity through a rolling percentile rather than a fixed cutoff reflects the statistical principle that a meaningful threshold must adapt to the local distribution of the data. By continually recomputing what counts as outsized against a moving window of recent activity, the tool guards against both the false positives that a fixed threshold produces in quiet conditions and the false negatives it produces in volatile ones โ an application of adaptive, distribution-relative reasoning that keeps the classification honest across changing conditions.
โ ๏ธ Disclaimer
This tool is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice, nor a recommendation to buy or sell any security or instrument. All participation-quality readings, including large-participant estimates, absorption and iceberg footprints, and the anchored fair-value reference, are statistical estimates derived from aggregated volume behavior and are not confirmations of actual order origin or trade intent. Markets involve substantial risk, and past behavior does not guarantee future results. Any decisions made using this tool are taken solely at your own discretion and risk, and we accept no liability whatsoever for any loss or damage arising directly or indirectly from its use. Always conduct your own analysis and consider consulting a qualified professional before making any trading decision.
โจ Originality and Utility
โ A Structural Anchor Instead of a Static Window
Most volume tools begin measuring from an arbitrary fixed point โ a session open, a rolling lookback, or a manually dragged handle that goes stale the moment the market moves on. Vertical Volume Pro instead ties its measurement origin to the market's own structure. It continuously watches for shifts in trend character and, when a meaningful break occurs, it re-anchors its entire measurement window to the swing that launched the new leg. This means the volume anatomy you see always describes the move currently in play, not a leftover window from a regime that has already ended. The anchor is not a decoration; it is the spine of the entire tool, and every metric downstream inherits its relevance from it.
โ Vertical Columns as a New Visual Grammar
By standing volume upright beneath the bars that generated it, the tool preserves the one dimension a traditional sideways profile discards: time. A horizontal profile tells you a price level was heavily traded but hides when that trading happened. Vertical columns keep the temporal order intact, so a trader can see whether heavy participation clustered at the start of a leg, punctuated its middle, or arrived only at exhaustion near the end. This temporal fidelity is what makes the downstream concepts โ consolidation groups, exhaustion gaps, and density clustering โ possible in the first place.
โ Participation-Quality Estimation, Honestly Framed
The tool goes beyond raw volume to estimate the character of who was trading. It surfaces an estimate of outsized single prints versus ordinary flow, flags absorption and repeated-refill footprints, and weights a fair-value line toward the heaviest activity. Crucially, it frames every one of these as a statistical estimate derived from candle volume behavior, never as confirmed order-origin data. This honesty is itself a differentiator: it delivers the interpretive power traders want from participation analysis while refusing to overpromise a certainty that no chart-based tool can legitimately provide.
โ One Overlay, Many Lenses
Rather than forcing a trader to stack four or five separate scripts, the tool consolidates structural anchoring, volume grouping, gap detection, large-print flagging, absorption sensing, iceberg-run recognition, a whale-weighted rating system, an anchored fair-value line, and a live metrics panel into a single coherent overlay. Each lens can be toggled independently, so the same tool serves a fast scalper wanting only the dominant zone and a methodical swing trader wanting the full anatomy.
๐ฌ Methodology and Concepts
โ Structural Anchoring and Trend State
The foundation of the tool is its reading of market structure. It tracks the most recent meaningful swing high and swing low and monitors whether price decisively reclaims or breaks them. When price closes beyond a governing swing, the tool interprets this as a change in the prevailing direction and re-anchors the active measurement range to the swing point that seeded the new move. This produces a clear trend state โ bullish when the market has broken structure to the upside, bearish when it has broken to the downside โ and the age of the current anchor, expressed in bars, tells you how mature the present leg has become. A trader can choose a Micro sensitivity that reacts to minor swings for scalping, or a Macro sensitivity that responds only to larger cycle turns for position-oriented work. A manual anchor mode is also available for those who prefer to pin the measurement to a specific date rather than let structure decide.
โ Vertical Volume Distribution
Within the active range, the tool captures fine-grained volume from a lower timeframe and stands it upright beneath the price bars. Each column reflects the participation that occurred at that point in the leg. A trader reads tall columns as moments of conviction and short columns as moments of hesitation. Because time is preserved, the sequence of columns reveals the rhythm of the move โ whether it was front-loaded with commitment, evenly participated, or driven late by a burst of activity.
โ Consolidation Groups
Rather than leaving the eye to interpret dozens of individual columns, the tool identifies stretches where participation clusters into a coherent block and presents them as grouped zones. Each group reflects a region of the leg where meaningful volume accumulated together. Groups let a trader instantly perceive where the market spent its energy, and the single heaviest group is highlighted as the dominant zone โ the region that anchored the most participation across the entire move and therefore the most consequential area to watch on any retest.
โ Exhaustion Gaps
Just as important as where volume concentrates is where it evaporates. The tool exposes low-participation stretches at the edges of the volume body and interprets them directionally: thin regions above the concentrated activity are read as overhead vacuum that can act as resistance, while thin regions below are read as underlying vacuum that can act as support. These gaps mark the price territory the market crossed with little commitment, which is often where price moves quickly when revisited.
โ Temporal Density Clustering
Two groups can hold identical volume yet mean very different things depending on how tightly that volume was packed in time. The tool quantifies the degree to which a group's participation is concentrated into a narrow window of active bars versus spread thinly across a wide span. Groups whose activity is tightly compressed can be flagged as temporal clusters, distinguishing a sudden concentrated burst from a slow, diffuse accumulation โ a distinction that carries real interpretive weight for anticipating follow-through.
โ Estimated Large-Participant Split
The tool separates the estimated footprint of outsized single prints from the estimated footprint of ordinary flow within each group. It does this by referencing a rolling percentile of recent activity, so the definition of an outsized print adapts to whether the market is currently quiet or volatile rather than being fixed to a single range. Each group can then reveal what share of its volume came from these outsized prints, and a group whose outsized share crosses a chosen dominance level is colored to reflect that large-participant character. This is explicitly an estimate drawn from volume behavior, not a confirmed identification of institutional trades.
โ Absorption Footprint
Absorption describes the classic tell of disguised accumulation or distribution: a large slug of volume enters while price barely moves, as if an unseen participant is quietly soaking up everything offered. The tool flags prints that combine disproportionately large volume with a disproportionately small price range, surfacing moments where heavy activity failed to move price and thereby hinting at a hidden actor absorbing flow.
โ Iceberg Refill Runs
An iceberg footprint appears as a sequence of adjacent prints with near-identical volume clustered at the same price level, the signature of a hidden order being repeatedly refilled as it is filled. The tool recognizes these runs, marks their completion, and can bracket the full span of the refill sequence with a count of how many prints participated. It can further read the net directional lean of the run โ net-buying runs are interpreted as estimated accumulation and placed below the sequence, net-selling runs as estimated distribution and placed above, while balanced runs remain neutral. A tolerance for what counts as neutral prevents marginal imbalances from being over-interpreted.
โ Whale Weight Rating
To help a trader rank groups at a glance, the tool assigns a one-to-three-star rating to each group based on its absolute large-participant weight โ the outsized share multiplied by the group's total volume โ measured against the strongest such group in the range. This deliberately rewards true weight over mere percentage: a group with a moderate outsized share of an enormous column can outrank a group with a high outsized share of a tiny one, so the stars reflect real participation heft rather than a misleading ratio.
โ Anchored Institutional Fair Value
The tool exposes an anchored volume-weighted fair-value line built exclusively from the prints it estimates to be outsized, anchored to the active range origin. This line approximates the average price at which estimated large-participant volume engaged with the market. When price trades above this line, the market sits at a premium to that estimated fair value โ a potential distribution zone; when price trades below it, the market sits at a discount โ a potential accumulation zone. The live distance between price and this line, expressed as a percentage, gives a running read on how stretched the market has become relative to where the heavy money is estimated to have participated.
โ Net Delta and Range Statistics
Alongside the visual anatomy, the tool maintains running statistics for the active range: the net directional balance of volume expressed as a percentage of total participation, the total volume captured, the price span of the range, the average participation per print, and the duration of the leg in bars. These give a trader a compact quantitative summary to complement the visual read.
๐จ Visual Guide
โ The Vertical Columns and Groups
The core of the display is a field of upright volume elements planted beneath price. In grouped mode, coherent blocks of participation appear as shaded boxes spanning the bars that formed them, with the single heaviest group standing out in its dominant color. In raw mode, each unit of participation appears as its own vertical line, with the tallest drawn thicker and in the dominant hue. Labels sit atop each element showing either its share of total range volume or its raw traded volume, and adjacent labels can be staggered in height so they never collide when columns crowd together. Very small columns can keep their bar while hiding their label to keep the chart clean.
โ The Dominant Zone
The heaviest group is framed by a pair of dashed boundary lines with a soft fill between them, marking the price-time region that anchored the most participation in the entire leg. This is the visual centerpiece โ the area a trader most wants to see defended or broken on a retest.
โ Exhaustion Gap Shading
Thin-participation regions at the edges of the volume body are shaded in two directional colors: one hue marks overhead vacuum read as resistance, the other marks underlying vacuum read as support, each carrying its own labeled share of range volume and its own text color so the two are never confused.
โ Participation-Split Coloring
When the large-participant split is active, group boxes and their labels take on distinct colors depending on whether estimated outsized activity or ordinary flow dominates that group, and the label appends a compact whale-share readout. Temporal clusters receive their own accent border and marker color so a concentrated burst is immediately distinguishable from a diffuse group.
โ Footprint Markers
Distinct emoji-led markers flag the specialized footprints: one marks prints exceeding an independent absolute activity threshold, one marks absorption prints, and one marks completed iceberg runs. Iceberg runs can additionally be wrapped in a span bracket with end ticks and a central print-count label, and their marker color shifts to signal estimated accumulation, distribution, or a neutral balance. Each marker carries a tooltip with the underlying figures for a closer look.
โ Whale Star Ratings
Beneath qualifying groups, a vertical stack of one to three stars renders the group's relative large-participant weight, with earned stars filled and unearned positions shown at reduced opacity, plus a tooltip stating the exact weighting.
โ The Anchored Fair-Value Line and Label
The anchored institutional fair-value line runs horizontally from the range origin to just beyond the latest bar, terminating in a label that states the line's value, whether price sits at a premium or discount, and the exact percentage distance. The label's color reflects the premium or discount state at a glance.
โ The Metrics Panel
A compact monospace panel, positionable in any chart corner, presents a live readout of the tool's state: the structural trend, the anchor mode and age, the price range and total volume, an activity-buffer gauge, the dominance share, the render mode, the estimated whale dominance, net delta, absorption and iceberg counts, the outsized-print threshold, the dominant-zone span, the structural timeframe, average participation per print, the range duration, the anchored fair-value figure, and the current premium-or-discount status. Several rows include block-style gauges whose fill and color scale with the underlying reading, turning numbers into an at-a-glance strength meter.
๐ How to Use
โ Step One โ Choose Your Anchoring
Decide whether the tool should follow structure automatically or pin to a date you choose. For most workflows, leave it in automatic mode and select Micro sensitivity for intraday and scalping work or Macro sensitivity for swing and position work. If you are studying a specific historical episode, enable the manual anchor and set your start and, optionally, end dates.
โ Step Two โ Read the Structural State
Glance at the panel to confirm the prevailing trend and how mature the current leg is. A young anchor age means the move is fresh and the volume anatomy is still forming; a large anchor age means the leg is well developed and its dominant zone is well established.
โ Step Three โ Locate the Dominant Zone
Find the framed dominant zone โ the region that anchored the most participation. Treat it as the leg's center of gravity: on a pullback, watch whether price stabilizes there or slices through it, as that behavior often distinguishes continuation from reversal.
โ Step Four โ Map the Gaps
Note the exhaustion gaps above and below the concentrated activity. These vacuum regions are where price tends to travel quickly when revisited, and they frame natural areas where support or resistance is thin.
โ Step Five โ Weigh Participation Quality
Consult the whale-share readouts, the star ratings, and the footprint markers. A dominant zone that is also whale-dominant and highly rated carries more interpretive weight than one built on ordinary flow. Absorption and iceberg markers highlight moments where hidden activity may have been at work.
โ Step Six โ Reference the Fair-Value Line
Use the anchored fair-value line as an equilibrium reference. Price at a premium suggests the market is extended above where heavy activity engaged; price at a discount suggests it is trading below that level. Combine this with the dominant zone and gaps to frame entries, targets, and invalidations.
โ Step Seven โ Automate with Alerts
Attach alerts so the tool notifies you when a new dominant zone forms, when absorption is detected, or when price flips to a premium or discount relative to the fair-value line, letting you monitor multiple markets without watching each chart.
โ๏ธ Inputs and Settings
โ Core Settings
- Enable Manual Anchor โ bypasses automatic structural anchoring and starts the range from a date you choose.
- Manual Start Date โ the origin of the range when manual anchoring is active.
- Manual End Date โ the end of the manual range; ignored when the range is extended to the present.
- Extend Range to Present โ keeps the manual range running up to the latest bar rather than stopping at the manual end date.
โ Filters
- Anchor Mode โ chooses Micro sensitivity for immediate structure and scalping, or Macro sensitivity for larger cycles and swing trading.
- Structure Timeframe โ the timeframe used to read highs, lows, and structural breaks; leave empty to use the chart timeframe.
- Micro Swing Length โ the sensitivity length for minor swing detection.
- Macro Swing Length โ the sensitivity length for major swing detection.
โ Vertical Volume Settings
- Use Custom Timeframe โ enables a chosen lower timeframe for the underlying volume detail instead of an automatically selected one.
- Custom Timeframe โ the lower timeframe used to gather granular volume.
- Show VV Groups & Gaps โ renders consolidation groups and exhaustion gaps; when on, individual volume lines are hidden for clarity.
- Flag Temporal Clusters โ highlights groups whose participation is concentrated in a narrow time window.
- Cluster Density Threshold % โ the minimum bar-fill ratio required for a group to be flagged as a tight temporal cluster.
- Show Raw Volume (not %) โ displays actual traded volume in labels instead of a percentage of range volume.
- Stagger Labels โ alternates the height of adjacent group labels to prevent overlap.
- Hide Labels Below % โ hides labels for groups whose share of range volume falls below the set percentage.
- Height % of Range โ controls how tall the volume elements appear relative to the price range.
- Enable Whale/Retail Split โ separates estimated outsized activity from ordinary flow within each group using a percentile heuristic.
- Whale Percentile โ the volume percentile above which prints are classified as outsized.
- Whale Rolling Window (Prints) โ the number of recent prints used to set the outsized threshold, adapting it to current conditions.
- Whale Dominance Threshold % โ the minimum outsized share required for a group to be colored as large-participant-dominant.
- Hide 0% Whale Columns โ hides any group whose estimated outsized share is exactly zero.
- Use Absolute LTF Avg Threshold โ an independent reference that flags prints exceeding a multiple of recent average activity.
- Absolute Avg Lookback (N) โ the number of recent lower-timeframe candles used for that independent average.
- Absolute Avg Multiplier โ the multiple of average activity a print must exceed to be flagged.
- Enable Absorption Filter โ flags prints combining large volume with disproportionately small price movement.
- Absorption Volume Multiplier โ how far a print's volume must exceed the recent average to qualify as large.
- Absorption Max Range % โ the maximum relative price range a print may have and still qualify as absorption.
- Enable Iceberg Detection โ recognizes sequences of near-identical prints at one level; off by default to protect performance.
- Iceberg Volume Tolerance % โ the maximum volume deviation between consecutive prints for them to count as one run.
- Iceberg Price Tolerance % โ the maximum step-to-step price deviation for a run to continue at the same level.
- Iceberg Min Repeats โ the minimum consecutive matching prints required to flag a run.
- Iceberg Scan Cap (Prints) โ a hard limit on how many recent prints are scanned, protecting performance on large ranges.
- Show Iceberg Span Bracket โ draws a bracket spanning the full refill sequence with a print count.
- Directional Iceberg Placement โ places the marker below net-buying runs and above net-selling runs.
- Iceberg Neutral Delta % โ the delta band within which a run is treated as balanced.
โ Whale Rating
- Show Whale Star Rating โ rates each group one to three stars by its absolute large-participant weight.
- 3-Star Threshold % โ the relative weight at which a group earns three stars.
- 2-Star Threshold % โ the relative weight at which a group earns two stars, below which it earns one.
โ Institutional AVWAP
- Show Institutional AVWAP (AIC) โ displays the anchored fair-value line weighted only by estimated outsized prints.
- Show AIC Label โ toggles the line's value-and-status label.
- AIC Line Width โ sets the thickness of the fair-value line.
โ Dashboard
- Position โ places the metrics panel in any chart corner.
โ Alerts
- Dominant Zone Action โ the action label embedded in the dominant-zone alert payload.
- Absorption Action โ the action label embedded in the absorption alert payload.
- AIC Premium Action โ the action label embedded in the premium-flip alert payload.
- AIC Discount Action โ the action label embedded in the discount-flip alert payload.
โ Colors
- A full palette lets you set the bar color, dominant bar color, label backgrounds and text, dominant-zone fill, whale and retail colors, temporal-cluster accent, absolute-threshold and absorption markers, iceberg neutral, accumulation, distribution, bracket and text colors, star color, fair-value line and premium and discount colors, support and resistance gap colors and their text, and the full set of dashboard background, header, row, border, frame, bullish, bearish, neutral, mode, age, metric, and score colors.
๐ Deconstruction of the Underlying Scientific and Academic Framework
โ Volume as the Language of Conviction
The tool sits in the lineage of volume-based market analysis that traces back to the tape-reading tradition and to the foundational work of Richard Wyckoff, whose framework of accumulation and distribution phases treated volume as the primary evidence of intent behind price. The distinction the tool draws between concentrated participation and thin vacuum echoes Wyckoff's insistence that effort, measured in volume, must be weighed against result, measured in price movement โ the very comparison that underpins the absorption concept, where large effort producing little result signals a hidden actor at work.
โ Volume Distribution and Value Theory
The idea of mapping where participation concentrates draws on the volume-distribution thinking popularized by market-profile theory, associated with the work of J. Peter Steidlmayer, which frames the market as constantly searching for areas of accepted value defined by where trade concentrates versus where it is rejected. Vertical Volume Pro inherits this value-search premise but re-expresses it along the time axis rather than the price axis, so that the dominant zone functions as a temporally aware analogue to a high-participation value area, and the exhaustion gaps function as analogues to the low-participation extremes the market moves through quickly.
โ Anchored Volume-Weighted Fair Value
The anchored fair-value reference is grounded in the theory of the volume-weighted average price, a benchmark long used to define the participation-weighted centroid of trading over a defined window. By anchoring this benchmark to a structural origin and weighting it toward estimated outsized activity, the tool extends the standard VWAP concept in the spirit of anchored-VWAP methodologies, producing a reference that estimates the fair value seen by the heaviest participants rather than by the average of all flow. The premium-and-discount interpretation of price relative to this reference reflects the mean-reversion intuition embedded in benchmark-execution theory, where trading materially away from the participation-weighted centroid is treated as a stretched condition.
โ Order Concealment and Microstructure
The absorption and iceberg concepts are rooted in market-microstructure research on how large participants conceal intent to minimize their market impact โ the study of hidden and iceberg orders that reveal themselves only through their footprint in the trade record. The recognition of repeated near-identical prints at a stable price level as evidence of a refilled hidden order reflects the microstructure understanding that a large resting interest, when broken into slices, leaves a statistically distinctive signature even when the full order is never visible on the book. Framing these as estimates rather than certainties respects the core limitation of the field: from aggregated candle data one can infer a footprint but never confirm the order behind it.
โ Regime Awareness and Structural Breaks
The tool's habit of re-anchoring to structural breaks connects to the broader literature on regime change and structural breaks in financial time series, where the recognition that a series' governing behavior has shifted is treated as essential to any measurement that follows. By resetting its measurement window at each break, the tool avoids the well-documented error of averaging across regimes and instead keeps every statistic conditioned on the currently prevailing state.
โ Adaptive Thresholding
The choice to define outsized activity through a rolling percentile rather than a fixed cutoff reflects the statistical principle that a meaningful threshold must adapt to the local distribution of the data. By continually recomputing what counts as outsized against a moving window of recent activity, the tool guards against both the false positives that a fixed threshold produces in quiet conditions and the false negatives it produces in volatile ones โ an application of adaptive, distribution-relative reasoning that keeps the classification honest across changing conditions.
โ ๏ธ Disclaimer
This tool is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice, nor a recommendation to buy or sell any security or instrument. All participation-quality readings, including large-participant estimates, absorption and iceberg footprints, and the anchored fair-value reference, are statistical estimates derived from aggregated volume behavior and are not confirmations of actual order origin or trade intent. Markets involve substantial risk, and past behavior does not guarantee future results. Any decisions made using this tool are taken solely at your own discretion and risk, and we accept no liability whatsoever for any loss or damage arising directly or indirectly from its use. Always conduct your own analysis and consider consulting a qualified professional before making any trading decision.
Release Notes
This release focuses on reading intent behind absorption events and on keeping the chart readable when activity is heavy. Absorption flags now carry a directional bias, flag density can be capped to the most recent events, and the Institutional AVWAP line itself now reflects premium/discount state at a glance.NEW FEATURE โ Directional Absorption Placement
Absorption flags are no longer placed uniformly. Each qualifying absorption print is now evaluated for its underlying buying-versus-selling balance and positioned to reflect that bias.
Prints dominated by net buying are treated as estimated accumulation; prints dominated by net selling are treated as estimated distribution. Prints without a meaningful lean are left neutral.
The tolerance that separates a genuinely one-sided print from a balanced one is user-adjustable, so you can tighten or loosen how readily the indicator assigns a directional read.
Each flag's tooltip now names the state it was assigned, giving you the classification without needing to infer it from position alone.
This mirrors the directional treatment already applied to iceberg sequences, so both absorption and iceberg footprints are now read the same way.
How to Use It
A flag sitting below the print marks estimated accumulation โ large volume was absorbed while price held, with buying carrying the balance. These are the absorption events most worth watching for support behaviour.
A flag sitting above the print marks estimated distribution โ size was absorbed with selling carrying the balance, a common footprint beneath resistance.
A flag that remains in the neutral position tells you size changed hands without a clear winner. Treat it as a level of interest rather than a directional cue.
Clusters of same-sided flags at a similar price carry far more weight than one isolated flag. Repeated accumulation flags at one level are the higher-conviction read.
Hover any flag to confirm its assigned state and the volume behind it before acting on the placement.
NEW FEATURE โ Limit To Recent Flags
An optional display cap that keeps only the most recent absorption and iceberg flags on the chart, hiding older ones so the current picture stays legible.
The cap applies independently to each flag type, so a busy absorption session will not push your iceberg markers off the chart or vice versa.
The number of flags retained is user-adjustable, letting you choose between a minimal recent-activity view and a fuller historical picture.
Off by default โ existing chart layouts are unaffected until you opt in.
How to Use It
On fast or high-volume instruments where flags accumulate quickly, enable the cap and keep the count low to focus purely on what is happening now.
When reviewing a full session or studying how a level was built, raise the count or switch the cap off to see the complete sequence of footprints.
Because the two flag types are capped separately, the surviving markers always represent the latest activity of each kind, not whichever type happened to fire more often.
REFINEMENTS
The Institutional AVWAP line now takes on its premium or discount color directly, rather than rendering in a single fixed color. The line's state is readable at a glance without checking the label, and it stays visually consistent with the label and the dashboard, which already reflected this state.
Absorption alerts now key off the most recent qualifying print, keeping alert timing aligned with the newest event on the chart.
Release Notes
NEW: Volume Shelf Detection (replaces Iceberg Detection)- Rebuilt from the ground up and renamed to describe what it actually finds: runs of consecutive intrabar prints that hold one price level on steady volume.
- A run now requires its prints to be genuinely adjacent in time, to share a traded price with the print before them, and to stay level-bound rather than drifting โ removing the trending false positives the previous version produced.
- Each shelf is marked with a span bracket showing its full extent and its print count, coloured by whether the run was net buying, net selling, or balanced.
- The dashboard reports a live shelf count and warns you when a range is large enough that the scan was truncated and the count is conservative.
- Tolerances, minimum run length, scan depth, bracket display and directional colouring are all user-adjustable.
How to Use
- A bracket marks where price stalled while volume kept transacting โ that level is being defended or filled, not passed through.
- A flag below the shelf indicates estimated accumulation; above indicates estimated distribution; the neutral colour means no clear bias.
- The count inside the flag is how many consecutive prints held the level โ longer runs point to a more stubbornly defended price.
- A warning marker beside the dashboard count means older shelves in the range went unscanned, so the true count is higher.
NEW: Rebuilt Absorption Engine
- Absorption detection has been rebuilt around a single unified test that judges a print's volume and its price movement together, rather than testing size and range separately as before.
- This removes the most common false positive: a genuinely large print that also travelled a large distance is now correctly rejected instead of flagged.
- A separate minimum-size filter excludes prints too small to matter, so quiet prints can no longer score highly by accident.
- Detection frequency is instrument-dependent by nature; the sensitivity control now carries in-panel guidance for tuning it to your symbol.
NEW: Unified Volume Resolution Control
- A single Custom Timeframe setting now governs every volume calculation in the indicator โ the profile, the whale/retail split, the Institutional AVWAP, the absorption and shelf scans, and every volume figure on the dashboard.
- The previous automatic resolution selector and its enable toggle have been removed, so what appears on the chart always matches the resolution you chose.
- Invalid choices are caught immediately with a plain-language message naming both timeframes, instead of producing silently distorted results.
- The same protection now covers the Structure Timeframe and non-standard chart types, whose synthetic prices and volumes cannot support these calculations.
NEW: Data Integrity Warnings
- The dashboard now tells you when the underlying data cannot support its conclusions, instead of silently reporting figures built on it.
- A dedicated warning row appears when the symbol's feed reports transaction counts rather than traded size, when no intrabar prints have arrived yet, or when the range holds no volume at all.
- The buffer row now reports how much of the active range actually returned intrabar data, and flags when the internal ceiling has been reached and new prints are no longer being taken in.
How to Use
- A red warning row at the top of the dashboard means every volume-derived figure below it should be read as a directional hint only.
- A coverage percentage and warning marker on the buffer row means part of the range is missing from the profile โ shorten the range or expect partial coverage.
- A stop marker on that row means intake has halted entirely and the most recent part of the range is excluded from every figure.
NEW: Unrendered Volume Reporting
- A new dashboard row reports the share of range volume that carries no box and no label on the chart, so the visible percentages can be reconciled against the whole range.
How to Use
- A low reading means the chart is showing you nearly all of the range's activity.
- A high reading means much of the range falls between the group and gap definitions โ widen those settings if you want more of it drawn.
Additional Features
- Group and gap formation are now user-adjustable, so you control how inclusive the solid volume columns and the exhaustion gap zones are instead of accepting fixed behaviour.
- A new Max Print Gap control decides whether groups, gap zones and shelves may bridge session breaks, weekends and holidays, or must stay strictly continuous.
- Every derived dashboard row now carries a tooltip explaining exactly what it measures and how your resolution choice affects it.
- Webhook payloads are now schema-versioned, safely escaped, and carry live values captured at the moment the alert fires; alert messages now include symbol, timeframe and price.
Refinements
- Dominant Range now measures the dominant zone's own price extent rather than the whole active range.
- The dominance row is labelled by render mode, so it is always clear whether it refers to a group or a single print.
- Range duration is now reported in readable time units and clearly separated from the bar-count anchor age.
- Net delta is now labelled as an estimate, and prints closing level no longer count as buying.
- Whale classification uses one consistent threshold across the volume profile and the Institutional AVWAP, so the two always agree.
- Swing detection no longer produces false pivots at the edges of incomplete data.
- Volume is now captured only on confirmed bars, removing intrabar flicker from the profile and every figure derived from it.
- Prints sitting exactly on a new anchor are retained correctly when the range resets.
- The dominant zone is identified unambiguously when two zones carry equal volume, and star thresholds apply correctly even if set out of order.
- Substantial performance work throughout: heavy drawing is deferred to the live bar, running totals are maintained incrementally, and repeated scans reuse prior work โ larger ranges and finer resolutions now run comfortably within execution limits.
- Swing length settings now have upper bounds to prevent unworkable values.
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๐ก Proprietary indicators. Original research. Built by analysts who trade.
๐ข Free Telegram: t.me/MarkitTick_Updates
๐ Premium: markittick.com
๐ข Free Telegram: t.me/MarkitTick_Updates
๐ Premium: markittick.com
Disclaimer
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations supplied or endorsed by TradingView. Read more in the Terms of Use.
Available in Paid Space
This indicator is only available to MarkitTick subscribers. Join to access this and other scripts by MarkitTick.
๐ก Proprietary indicators. Original research. Built by analysts who trade.
๐ข Free Telegram: t.me/MarkitTick_Updates
๐ Premium: markittick.com
๐ข Free Telegram: t.me/MarkitTick_Updates
๐ Premium: markittick.com
Disclaimer
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations supplied or endorsed by TradingView. Read more in the Terms of Use.