Guide · POC Candle
The point of control of every candle: what a per-bar POC shows and how to use it
The point of control (POC) of a candle is the price at which that bar traded the most volume. A per-bar POC marks it inside every candle, so you can see whether each bar did its business near the high, near the low, in a wick or through the body. In NinjaTrader 8, the free TapeCrest POC Candle draws it on any bar type, with Tick Replay for the bars that closed before you added it.
Updated · 6 min read · TapeCrest
What is a per-bar POC?
In volume profile analysis, the point of control (POC) is the price with the most traded volume over a period such as a session. A per-bar POC applies the same idea to a single candle: of all the prices the bar traded, it marks the one where the most contracts changed hands.
TapeCrest POC Candle collects the volume at price, the contracts traded at each price, inside the bar that is forming, trade by trade, and marks the busiest price. Only trades count; bid and ask quotes are not used. Your candles stay exactly as they are: the indicator adds one small mark, a line, a one-tick box or a dot, and if you like the price beside it. Because the volume is collected inside whichever bar is forming, it works on minute, tick, range, volume, Renko and other bar types.
Two neighbouring tools do related jobs. A session volume profile shows volume at price for a whole session, and a footprint chart splits each price inside the bar into volume at the bid and at the ask. The per-bar POC is the lightest of the three: one mark per bar.
What does the position of the POC tell you?
A candle's body spans its open and close; its wicks are the thin lines beyond the body, up to the high and down to the low. Where the POC sits among them is the information:
| Where the POC sits | What it describes |
|---|---|
| Near the high | Most of the bar's volume traded at its upper end |
| Near the low | Most of the bar's volume traded at its lower end |
| In a wick, beyond both the open and the close | The bar did most of its volume at prices it then left |
| In the middle of the body | The volume was spread through the move |
| At about the same price on several bars | A price where a range did much of its business |
Two more states complete the picture:
- The forming bar. Its POC can move with every trade as the busiest price changes; once the bar closes, its POC is final. Separate colour for the current bar paints it differently, so you can watch it move.
- Untouched POCs. An untouched POC, often called a naked POC, is one that no later bar has traded back through. With Highlight untouched POCs on, these marks take their own colour, and each returns to the normal colour as soon as a later bar, the forming one included, trades at its price. The newest bar is never marked untouched, because nothing has happened after it yet.
Why do older bars need Tick Replay?
A per-bar POC is found by watching trades arrive. For bars that closed before the indicator was loaded, NinjaTrader 8 has to replay those trades, and that is what Tick Replay does: a free, per-chart setting that feeds the historical ticks of the loaded days to indicators as if they were arriving now. Without it, marks appear only on bars that form after you add the indicator, and older bars stay bare, which is the expected behaviour. Tick Replay needs historical tick data from your connection, and it costs memory and loading time.
Order Flow+ is a different thing: a NinjaTrader entitlement on your account for volumetric data. TapeCrest POC Candle does not need it.
How do you set up a per-bar POC in NinjaTrader 8?
- In your TapeCrest workspace, add the tool to your library and copy its installation key. Import its ZIP in NinjaTrader 8 with Tools → Import → NinjaScript Add-On.
- In the Control Center choose Tools → Settings → Market data and tick Show Tick Replay. Older NinjaTrader 8 builds call the menu item Options. Until this box is ticked, no chart's Data Series window shows a Tick Replay row.
- Open a 1-minute chart of the instrument you follow, for example ES or NQ. Right-click → Data Series... (Ctrl+F), set Tick Replay to true, set Days to load to only the days you need, and press OK. The chart reloads its data.
- Add TapeCrest POC Candle from the Indicators window (Ctrl+I).
- The first time only, click POC in the chart toolbar, choose TapeCrest access, then Paste key & verify.
- Shape the marks in the TapeCrest POC Candle settings window, opened from the same POC button; every change applies at once. On a white chart, load the TapeCrest Light template; on a dark chart, TapeCrest Dark.
| Setting | Default | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| POC style | Line | Choose Line, Box (one tick tall, so the price reads off the axis) or Dot |
| Separate colour for the current bar | Off | Watch the forming bar's POC move |
| Highlight untouched POCs | Off | Colour the POCs price has not traded back through |
| Show POC price | Off | Write the price beside each mark |
| Ticks per level | 1 | Group ticks before the busiest price is picked: calmer, less precise |
| Recent bars only | 0 | Draw marks on the newest N bars only; 0 draws every bar in view |
| Minimum bar volume | 0 | Skip the mark on thin bars |
| Max bars kept in memory | 5000 | Keep about three and a half days of 1-minute bars on a market open about 23 hours a day |
With Ticks per level above 1, the busiest block of ticks wins and the mark sits on the busiest single price inside it, so the mark is always on a price that traded.
How can you use per-bar POCs?
These are reading exercises, not trade instructions:
- Volume in the wick. When a bar's POC sits in its wick, beyond the open and the close, note that price. With untouched POCs highlighted, you can see whether and when price comes back to it, and how the bars behave there.
- Volume beyond a level. When a bar closes beyond a level you already watch, such as a prior high, the opening range high or low, or the session open, compare where its POC formed. A POC beyond the level shows that the bar did most of its business in new territory; a POC still inside the old range shows that the move beyond the level came on less of the bar's volume.
- Clusters. Several marks at about the same price show where a range did its business, and they make useful reference prices when you review a session.
The indicator states where volume traded. What that means for the next bar is your reading, and every trading decision stays yours.
If something looks off: older bars without marks mean Tick Replay is off on that chart. Gaps in the middle usually come from Recent bars only or Minimum bar volume, or from bars that formed while the connection was down. Marks that moved on closed bars mean Ticks per level changed, which re-picks every POC in memory. A slow chart needs fewer Days to load, because Tick Replay replays every trade of every loaded day.
Try it
TapeCrest POC Candle is free for life: a free account and a licence key, no card and no trial. It comes with an English guide and the TapeCrest Light and TapeCrest Dark templates. The TapeCrest POC Candle page shows how to get access, and the free tools page compares all four free tools. For volume at price across a whole session, read Volume Profile vs TPO; for bid and ask volume at every price inside the bar, read how to read a footprint chart.