I sort of get it. But
value area is supposed to be the area where the most amount (70%) of trading took place, so it seems like you would need to know volume as well, and if you don't know the exact volume at each specific price, I don't see how you can figure this. I don't understand how this information can be derived from a 30 minute chart. I know ant's program does it, I just don't understand how, which is another way of saying I still don't know, from a technical programming standpoint, what a TPO is.
In contrast, I wrote a program which can derive
value area and
POC from a price and volume chart, and it does so accurately, but only if the chart is a one-tick chart, because only then do you know how to precisely assign each bit of volume with the price it actually traded at. Anything more than one tick and you don't actually know at what price the volume traded, so how can you accurately know where 70% of the volume actually traded?
Say, for example, you have a completely symmetrical downtrending 30-minute chart. It looks like a staircase going down, each stair the same size and having taken the same time to form. Imagine that, however, the afternoon session actually traded twice as much volume as the morning session. Where would the
value area be, and how would you calculate it, given that you don't know exactly at what price all the volume traded?
The reason I was to know this is because I actually want to write my own MP indicator, because ant's is a little buggy for me. I asked ant this same question, but he didn't answer.
Anyway, there's something I'm still not getting about TPO. But thanks for the replies, guys.