OPEN-SOURCE SCRIPT
Updated Liquidity Heatmap
Liquidity Heatmap – POC and Value Area.
A rolling volume-density profile rendered directly onto the price chart. Over a configurable lookback window the indicator distributes each historical bar's volume across every price bin its high-low range covered, then draws the resulting distribution as color-graded horizontal lines at each bin's midpoint. Point of Control and Value Area (70 % of total volume) are computed automatically, and a compact right-side histogram mirrors the profile in the future-offset zone. Built for intraday and swing traders who want a live, minimal read of where the market actually did business — the real liquidity anchors, not manual pivots.
How it works:
The indicator recalculates every N bars (default 5). On each recalc it finds the highest and lowest price of the lookback window, splits that range into a configurable number of bins (default 40), and iterates through every bar in the window. For each bar its volume — or a unit weight if volume weighting is disabled — is added to every bin whose price range the bar crossed. The result is a density array: the more time price stayed inside a bin and the higher the volume of those bars, the larger its density value. Bins are drawn as thin horizontal lines at their midpoints, with color and transparency scaled by the ratio of bin density to peak density.
The Point of Control is the bin with the largest total. Value Area is grown outward from POC, alternately taking whichever adjacent side holds more volume, until 70 % of the entire distribution is covered — VAH becomes the upper boundary of that region and VAL the lower. A right-side density histogram in the chart's offset zone re-renders the same profile in bar-chart form, and the level labels (POC / VAH / VAL) sit past the histogram so they never overlap the main heatmap. The information panel in the top-right corner shows the numeric price of each level and its signed percentage delta to the current close, color-coded green when the level sits above price, red when below, gray at parity.
What it calculates:
- Volume density per price bin over the lookback window
- POC — Point of Control, the bin with peak accumulated volume
- VAH — Value Area High, upper boundary of the 70 % volume region
- VAL — Value Area Low, lower boundary of the 70 % volume region
- Signed delta from current close to POC / VAH / VAL, in percent
Key features:
- Rolling recalculation every N bars for tunable CPU / responsiveness balance
- Volume weighting (default) or touch-count mode as a per-price frequency map — useful when volume data is unreliable
- Four-stop plasma color gradient (deep navy → violet → magenta → amber), every stop user-overridable via input.color
- Constant 1-pixel line width across all bins; visual weight is carried entirely by color intensity and transparency
- POC solid line and label placed past the offset histogram for readability
- VAH / VAL dashed lines extended all the way to their labels so the eye follows the level continuously
- Compact right-side density histogram in the future-offset area, mirroring the main profile in bar-chart form
- Top-right information panel with POC / VAH / VAL price and signed percentage delta to the current close, colored by side (green above / red below / gray at parity)
- Independent visibility toggles for POC and Value Area
- Adaptive bin geometry — resolution scales automatically with the price range of the lookback window
- Runs on any timeframe and any instrument; no external data sources required
Who it's for:
Intraday scalpers, swing traders, order-flow and Market Profile practitioners who need to see the true volume anchors of the current regime instead of hand-drawn horizontals. The color-graded strips make dominant liquidity walls, thin gaps and Value Area boundaries visually obvious at a glance, so attention goes to execution rather than to marking up the chart.
A rolling volume-density profile rendered directly onto the price chart. Over a configurable lookback window the indicator distributes each historical bar's volume across every price bin its high-low range covered, then draws the resulting distribution as color-graded horizontal lines at each bin's midpoint. Point of Control and Value Area (70 % of total volume) are computed automatically, and a compact right-side histogram mirrors the profile in the future-offset zone. Built for intraday and swing traders who want a live, minimal read of where the market actually did business — the real liquidity anchors, not manual pivots.
How it works:
The indicator recalculates every N bars (default 5). On each recalc it finds the highest and lowest price of the lookback window, splits that range into a configurable number of bins (default 40), and iterates through every bar in the window. For each bar its volume — or a unit weight if volume weighting is disabled — is added to every bin whose price range the bar crossed. The result is a density array: the more time price stayed inside a bin and the higher the volume of those bars, the larger its density value. Bins are drawn as thin horizontal lines at their midpoints, with color and transparency scaled by the ratio of bin density to peak density.
The Point of Control is the bin with the largest total. Value Area is grown outward from POC, alternately taking whichever adjacent side holds more volume, until 70 % of the entire distribution is covered — VAH becomes the upper boundary of that region and VAL the lower. A right-side density histogram in the chart's offset zone re-renders the same profile in bar-chart form, and the level labels (POC / VAH / VAL) sit past the histogram so they never overlap the main heatmap. The information panel in the top-right corner shows the numeric price of each level and its signed percentage delta to the current close, color-coded green when the level sits above price, red when below, gray at parity.
What it calculates:
- Volume density per price bin over the lookback window
- POC — Point of Control, the bin with peak accumulated volume
- VAH — Value Area High, upper boundary of the 70 % volume region
- VAL — Value Area Low, lower boundary of the 70 % volume region
- Signed delta from current close to POC / VAH / VAL, in percent
Key features:
- Rolling recalculation every N bars for tunable CPU / responsiveness balance
- Volume weighting (default) or touch-count mode as a per-price frequency map — useful when volume data is unreliable
- Four-stop plasma color gradient (deep navy → violet → magenta → amber), every stop user-overridable via input.color
- Constant 1-pixel line width across all bins; visual weight is carried entirely by color intensity and transparency
- POC solid line and label placed past the offset histogram for readability
- VAH / VAL dashed lines extended all the way to their labels so the eye follows the level continuously
- Compact right-side density histogram in the future-offset area, mirroring the main profile in bar-chart form
- Top-right information panel with POC / VAH / VAL price and signed percentage delta to the current close, colored by side (green above / red below / gray at parity)
- Independent visibility toggles for POC and Value Area
- Adaptive bin geometry — resolution scales automatically with the price range of the lookback window
- Runs on any timeframe and any instrument; no external data sources required
Who it's for:
Intraday scalpers, swing traders, order-flow and Market Profile practitioners who need to see the true volume anchors of the current regime instead of hand-drawn horizontals. The color-graded strips make dominant liquidity walls, thin gaps and Value Area boundaries visually obvious at a glance, so attention goes to execution rather than to marking up the chart.
Release Notes
Release Notes — v1.1► CHANGE: Info panel background made fully transparent
The top-right information panel (POC / VAH / VAL rows) now renders with a fully transparent background. Previously the panel sat on a dark plate (color.new(#0d0221, 15)), which added visual weight to the overlay. bgcolor is now color.new(color.white, 100), so only the colored text remains — level names, prices and signed percentage deltas float freely in the top-right corner.
Release Notes
Release Notes — v1.2► NEW: Liquidity Voids (LVN) detection
A second layer of analysis was added on top of the existing heatmap: contiguous stretches of very low-volume bins are detected automatically and drawn as translucent zones spanning the full lookback window. Each zone represents a "vacuum" in the profile — a price band where few resting orders exist and where price historically travels fast without meaningful reaction. Zones are rendered with a faint red fill, a dashed border, a 45-degree diagonal hatching pattern that keeps them recognisable at any zoom level, and a centred "LVN · Path of Least Resistance" label. Detection is controlled by four inputs in the Levels group: LVN threshold (% of POC, default 15), Min consecutive bins for LVN zone (default 2), a "Only voids sandwiched between HVN" filter (off by default) that isolates the classic valley-between-two-peaks setups, and an LVN diagonal stripes density control. Edge voids touching the top or bottom of the traded range are excluded automatically so that wick tails are never misread as vacuum zones. All colours and the label text are user-configurable.
► NEW: High Volume Nodes (HVN) detection
Symmetric to the LVN pass, contiguous stretches of high-volume bins are surfaced as translucent gold zones with a centred "HVN · Reaction Zone" label. These are the secondary volume peaks that previously stayed hidden inside the heatmap gradient — the market's "fair value pockets" where price is likely to stall, reverse, or consolidate on retest. POC remains the strongest HVN and is still highlighted by its dedicated solid line; it also naturally falls inside an HVN band, which is intentional double-emphasis. Detection is controlled by three inputs in the Levels group: HVN threshold (% of POC, default 85), Min consecutive bins for HVN zone (default 1), and Show HVN zone label. All colours and the label text are user-configurable.
► CHANGE: Analysis window default lowered from 500 to 300 bars
The lookback default was reduced to 300 bars so the profile stays more responsive to the current market regime out of the box. On a 4H chart this covers roughly the last two months of price action — long enough to build a meaningful volume profile, short enough that a completed trend or fresh consolidation is not diluted by stale history. Users seeking smoother, broader context can raise the value back to 500-800 for intraday work or 1000+ for higher-timeframe swings.
► CHANGE: Number of price zones default raised from 40 to 80, maximum raised to 200
The bin count now defaults to 80 instead of 40, and the upper bound was extended from 80 to 200. Finer bins produce tighter, more accurate HVN and LVN placement — particularly on wide-range instruments where the classic 40-bin grid was smearing distinct volume peaks together. Users trading flat, low-volatility instruments can drop the value back to 40-60 to avoid fragmentation; users working on very wide ranges can now push to 100-150 for high-resolution work.
► CHANGE: Drawing budget increased
max_boxes_count was raised from 100 to 200 and max_lines_count from 200 to 500. The higher budgets accommodate the additional geometry introduced by the LVN and HVN passes (fill boxes, diagonal hatch lines) so that the histogram, POC line, VAH/VAL lines and level labels are never truncated when several void or high-volume zones exist at the same time.
Release Notes
Release Notes — v1.3► CHANGE: HVN zone border is now dashed
The gold rectangle drawn around each HVN zone previously used a solid one-pixel border. It now uses a dashed border (line.style_dashed), matching the style already used by LVN zones. This aligns the two zone types visually — solid fills stay reserved for real reference lines (POC, VAH, VAL), while dashed contours mark the softer, threshold-derived zones. No detection logic, colours, thresholds or defaults were changed.
Open-source script
In true PulseWire spirit, the creator of this script has made it open-source, so that traders can review and verify its functionality. Kudos to the author! While you can use it for free, remember that republishing the code is subject to our House Rules.
Disclaimer
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations supplied or endorsed by PulseWire. Read more in the Terms of Use.
Open-source script
In true PulseWire spirit, the creator of this script has made it open-source, so that traders can review and verify its functionality. Kudos to the author! While you can use it for free, remember that republishing the code is subject to our House Rules.
Disclaimer
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations supplied or endorsed by PulseWire. Read more in the Terms of Use.