Single Prints

What are Single Prints?

Single prints are price levels in a TPO profile that traded during only one time bracket, leaving the profile exactly one letter wide there. When they sit inside the body of the profile rather than at its extremes, they record a fast, one-directional move: price transited those levels so quickly that no later period returned to trade them. Auction theory reads that thinness as initiative activity that left an unfinished, one-sided auction behind.

Convention matters here: single prints at the very ends of a session's profile are called buying or selling tails and signal rejection, so the term usually refers to the mid-profile kind. Traders treat them like other thin structures, close cousins of low-volume nodes and the price-action fair value gap: potential support or resistance while intact, and a candidate for repair when price returns to auction the area properly. Neither the hold nor the fill is guaranteed.

How traders use it

• As reference levels: the edges of a single-print range are common spots to watch for a reaction on first retest, on the logic that a move fast enough to leave singles may be defended where it started.
• As unfinished business: when price rotates back, traders watch whether the thin zone fills in period by period (repair, which retires the level) or gets rejected quickly (the original imbalance is still being defended).
• As a day-type tell: fresh single prints appearing mid-session mark initiative range extension and argue against fading the move, while their absence keeps the day in balanced, rotational territory.