DRAWING TOOL
The session decides where the automatic profile goes. You decide where this one goes.

Volume Profile Drawing Tool

Draw a profile across any range you like — a single leg, a two-week balance, the overnight, the move you are actually asking a question about. Same engine as the session profile, aimed wherever you point it.

Specification
Placement
Two anchors, dragged. Move either end and the profile recalculates.
Timeframe
Any. A higher-timeframe profile over a lower-timeframe chart is the common use, and the reason this exists alongside the session profile.
Resolution
Ticks per level is yours to set, so the profile can be coarse for a two-week range or fine for one leg.
Levels
Point of control, value area high and low, each with independent line style, colour and extension.
Modes
Standard histogram or heatmap, with high and low volume node highlighting.
Why by hand

The range you are asking about is rarely the session.

An automatic session profile answers one question well: where did today trade. It cannot answer where the last three days of balance concentrated, or where the volume sat inside the leg that broke it, because those ranges do not start and end when the session does. This tool takes the same calculation and lets you put it anywhere — including across a range far longer than the chart's timeframe, which is how most people end up using it.

01

Heatmap mode, so concentration reads as intensity rather than only as bar length.

02

Grow left or right from either anchor, so profiles can sit clear of price.

03

High and low volume node highlighting with your own thresholds.

A volume profile drawn by hand across a range of an NQ chart, rendered as a heatmap: deep blue at the thin edges moving through green and yellow to orange and red at the densest prices, with the point of control line extended across the chart.
NQ 09-26 · heatmap modeThe same calculation as the session profile, aimed at a range chosen by hand and drawn in heatmap mode. Concentration reads as colour rather than only as bar length, so the shelf the auction actually used separates from the tails without measuring anything.
A hand-drawn volume profile on an NQ chart in blue, with violet blocks marking low volume nodes at the upper and lower extremes and red bars marking the highest volume prices near 29515, with an orange point of control line extended right.
NQ 09-26 · node highlightingThe same tool in standard mode with high and low volume node highlighting turned on. The violet blocks at the top and bottom are the thin prices — the ones with nothing in them to slow price down — and the red band is where size actually rested. Both thresholds are yours to set, and the low one is deliberately sensitive here.
Working with it

Lock it when you are done placing it.

A profile drawn across two weeks of price is a large object, and like every NinjaTrader drawing object it stays selectable after you place it. Once it is where you want it, open its properties and set Locked to true. The tool then ignores the pointer entirely — clicks pass through to the chart underneath, and the profile cannot be nudged out of position by accident.

Three ways to get there: right-click the profile and choose Properties, or right-click the chart and use Drawing Objects to reach any object on it, or press Escape first if you are still in drawing mode. To move it again later, unlock it the same way.

Worth doing on any drawing object you have taken the time to position. It is the difference between a profile you placed once and a profile you keep re-placing.

Included in Starter and above
Positioning

Where it fits.

The counterpart to the automatic session profile. One frames the day for you; this one frames whatever you are actually looking at.

VIEW STARTER — $29/MOCOMPARE TIERS

Requires NinjaTrader 8. OF-VPT-001