Profile shapes — D, P, b and B
The session's silhouette tells you which side was in control and what was left unfinished.
A profile's shape is a summary of the day's auction in one glance. Where the fat part sits tells you which prices the market accepted; where it is thin tells you which prices it rejected — and a thin end is unfinished business, because the auction left without finding a real opponent there. Four silhouettes cover most sessions.
P-shape — short covering
Price drove up off the low and then balanced at the highs. The long thin tail below is where nobody wanted to transact on the way up.
The classic reading is short covering: shorts buying to close, not new longs initiating. That distinction matters — covering is finite demand. It runs out when the shorts are done, and the buying that drove the move does not come back for a second trip.
- In a downtrend — usually a pause, not a bottom. Covering rallies inside downtrends make P-shapes routinely and then resume lower.
- In an uptrend — more constructive: longs were liquidated, the flush was absorbed, and value has moved up. The fat node becomes support.
- The tail is the risk — that thin lower band has no resting interest. If price re-enters it, expect speed, not a graceful retest.
b-shape — long liquidation
The mirror image: price sold off and then balanced at the lows. The thin tail above marks the prices abandoned on the way down.
Long liquidation — holders giving up, not new shorts pressing. Same finite logic as the P: forced selling exhausts itself. A b-shape at the end of an extended decline is often where a base begins; a b-shape inside an uptrend is usually just a flush that gets reclaimed.
B-shape — double distribution
Two separate areas of acceptance with a hollow middle — the market did business at one level, moved decisively, then did business at another. Typically a news break or a trend day that balanced twice.
The whole trade is the LVN in the middle. It is a genuine rejection zone: price traversed it quickly once and has no reason to linger on a revisit. Treat it as a binary line — above it the upper distribution is in play, below it the lower one. Do not expect it to hold as gentle support; expect price to pick a side and travel.
Thin profile — the trend day
Volume spread thinly across a wide range with no meaningful POC. One side was in control all session and value never formed.
This is the trend day signature, and it is the one shape that argues for continuation rather than reversion. No value was established, so there is no magnet to pull price back — and the entire range is thin, which means the whole session is a potential fast-travel zone on a revisit. Fading a thin profile is how accounts die.