Definition
#Measures where current price sits relative to the previous complete UTC day's Point of Control bucket. The POC is the price bucket with the highest traded volume in the completed prior session.
Formula & calculation
#Build the Volume Profile from trades in the previous complete UTC day.
Group traded notional into adaptive price buckets. Bucket size depends on the instrument's historical price range, so BTC and a thin low-priced coin do not share the same absolute bucket width.
Find the bucket with the highest total volume: this is the previous-day POC bucket.
If current price is inside the POC bucket:
If price is below the POC bucket:
If price is above the POC bucket:
Group traded notional into adaptive price buckets. Bucket size depends on the instrument's historical price range, so BTC and a thin low-priced coin do not share the same absolute bucket width.
Find the bucket with the highest total volume: this is the previous-day POC bucket.
If current price is inside the POC bucket:
distance = 0If price is below the POC bucket:
(current_price - poc_low) / current_price × 100If price is above the POC bucket:
(current_price - poc_high) / current_price × 100Units & range
%. Negative means price is below yesterday's POC bucket, 0 means inside it, positive means above it.
Interpretation
#The sign matters. Values near zero mean price is at or near the prior session's highest-volume bucket. Negative values locate price below that bucket; positive values locate it above.
Practical usage
#Use a between filter such as
-0.30 to 0.30 to find markets very close to yesterday's POC. Add live confirmation such as Total Volume Z-Score, Buy Volume Z-Score, Sell Volume Z-Score, or Net Taker Imbalance.Common mistakes
#Frequent interpretation traps and misuse patterns to avoid when applying this metric.
- Treating POC proximity as direction. It only says where price is relative to yesterday's highest-volume bucket.
- Forgetting the profile is based on the previous complete UTC day, not the current live session.
- Using the signed field when you only care about closeness. Use the absolute version for that.