Point of Control

What is the Point of Control?

The point of control (POC) is the price at which the most volume traded within a volume profile: the longest row of the histogram, the mode of the period's volume distribution. In time-based Market Profile work, where the idea originated with J. Peter Steidlmayer at the Chicago Board of Trade, the POC is the price with the longest row of TPOs (TPO profile); volume profiling swaps time at price for actual volume at price. Either way it marks where buyers and sellers did the most business, the most accepted price of that period's auction.

A POC is always relative to its profile period. A session POC, a weekly POC, and the POC of a composite anchored across a whole trading range are different levels with different weight. While a period is still building, the level is called the developing POC (dPOC), and it migrates as volume accumulates; only when the period closes is it fixed. Around it sits the value area, conventionally the band containing about 70% of the period's volume.

The POC matters because auctions organize around acceptance. Prices that traded heavily tend to attract trade again, while thinly traded prices get rejected or transited quickly, so the POC serves as the profile's anchor: a magnet in balanced conditions and a support/resistance candidate on later revisits. None of this is mechanical. A POC is a reference for building scenarios, not a level that is obliged to hold.

How to identify the Point of Control

Profile tools mark the POC automatically, but knowing how it is derived keeps you from over-trusting the printed line.

1. 1Build a profile for the chosen period: bucket traded volume (or TPO counts) by price across a session, week, month, or an anchored range. The period choice determines which POC you get, so name it explicitly.
2. 2Find the price bin with the largest total. That single row is the POC. When two rows tie, conventions differ; many tools take the row closer to the center of the profile.
3. 3Read it in context: mark the value area around it and note where the POC sits. A POC near the middle of value suggests two-sided balance, while a POC pressed against one edge of the profile suggests directional conviction.
4. 4Track its status: a developing POC can still migrate with every new bar, and a finished POC that price never revisits becomes a naked POC, which profile traders keep on the chart as an open reference.

How it's calculated

The price level that traded the most volume within the profile window.

Market Profile (TPO) charts apply the same recipe to time counts per row instead of volume; that variant is the TPO POC.

The value area is grown outward from the POC until roughly 70% of the window's volume is enclosed.

Bar-range distribution is an approximation; tick or intrabar data gives a more faithful profile.

How traders use it

• As support and resistance: a retest of a prior session's or week's POC is a high-information touch. Rejection keeps the old distribution's owners in control, while acceptance (price trading through it and holding) implies the market is re-entering old value and may rotate across it.
• As targets: untested prior POCs are common magnets in profile playbooks, projected as destinations when price breaks back toward an old distribution. They are scenarios, not certainties; some naked POCs stay untested for months.
• As a session bias read: dPOC migration shows where value is being accepted in real time. A dPOC stepping up underneath price supports long rotations, while a dPOC frozen far below a stretching price warns the move is thin (high- and low-volume nodes tell the same story structurally).
• As confluence: a POC that coincides with session VWAP, a prior day's high or low (prior period levels), or a higher-timeframe zone carries more weight than any single level alone.

Point of Control vs related concepts