OPEN-SOURCE SCRIPT
Updated Volume Footprint: Measuring by Math & Geometry
Introduction
Volume tells you how much traded. A footprint tells you where.
A conventional volume bar compresses all trading activity within a candle into a single total. That total measures participation, but it does not show how the activity was distributed through price. Two candles can carry similar volume and range while containing very different internal structures.
A volume footprint restores this missing dimension. It organizes a bar's volume across price levels and separates buying from selling, so the candle becomes a readable column: where activity concentrated, where one side dominated, and where the two sides met.
This price-level structure is the basis for the measurements and diagnostics used throughout this indicator.
1. The volume footprint
As introduced above, a footprint reveals the role and position of the real participants inside a candle. The diagram below illustrates the structure:
The diagram shows the footprint structure of a single candle: volume is distributed across price levels and separated into sell and buy activity. This makes the internal distribution of participation visible instead of reducing the candle to one total volume figure.
The real challenge in constructing a footprint is how buy and sell volume are derived. PulseWire’s native Footprint data provides the highest-fidelity source used by this indicator, but it is available only on Premium and Ultimate plans. To make the concept accessible to users on other plans, we therefore estimate buy and sell volume using the alternative methods described below. These methods are approximations, intended to explain and visualize footprint mechanics—not to claim the same precision as PulseWire’s native Footprint data.
Buy/Sell Volume Calculation Engines
The indicator uses three methods as engines for calculating buy and sell volume. These engines are selected from the Engine option in the indicator settings and will be explained individually below.
- Geometric
- Intrabar
- Footprint
A. Geometric Calculation Engine
The Geometric engine estimates buy and sell volume from the position of the candle’s close within its high–low range. A close nearer the high assigns a larger share to buying volume, while a close nearer the low assigns a larger share to selling volume.
As shown in the image, the Geometric engine is an estimation model based on the position of the candle’s close within its high–low range. Buy and sell volume are calculated as:
If the candle has no range, volume is divided equally between buying and selling.
It is important to emphasize that this is an estimated representation of buy and sell activity, not true transaction-side volume. However, it can still provide a useful analytical framework for markets where reported volume is incomplete, fragmented, or not representative of a centralized market-wide feed, such as many cryptocurrency markets and spot gold.
B. Intrabar Calculation Engine
The Intrabar engine derives buy and sell volume from lower-timeframe activity inside each chart bar, using PulseWire’s official ta library. Instead of estimating the split from the shape of the parent candle, it aggregates the lower-timeframe up and down volume returned by the library.
Higher intrabar resolution generally provides greater precision, but also reduces the amount of historical coverage available. Tick-level data offers the finest resolution where available, while a 1-minute lower timeframe provides a practical alternative that can also be used on lower PulseWire plans. On higher chart timeframes, such as 4-hour or daily charts, the 1-minute series can provide a substantially finer approximation of the internal buy/sell structure than calculations based only on the parent candle.
In practical terms, Intrabar provides the middle ground between simple candle-based estimation and native Footprint data: more granular than Geometric, yet still accessible across a wider range of PulseWire plans. Its effectiveness ultimately depends on how much lower-timeframe detail is available for the chart being analyzed.
C. Footprint Calculation Engine
The Footprint engine reads PulseWire’s native volume-footprint data directly. Unlike the Geometric and Intrabar engines, buy and sell volume are not inferred from candle geometry or lower-timeframe direction; they are obtained from PulseWire’s own price-level footprint structure.
This provides the highest-fidelity volume source used by the indicator and serves as the reference engine for footprint-based measurements. Access to this data requires a PulseWire Premium or Ultimate plan.
How are the footprint price rows constructed when native row-level data is available only through PulseWire’s Footprint engine on Premium and Ultimate plans?
For the native Footprint engine, each price row is read directly from PulseWire together with its buy and sell volume. For the Geometric and Intrabar engines, only bar-level buy and sell totals are available, so these totals must be distributed across the candle’s price range. To accomplish this, the indicator uses a Gaussian distribution model.
What Is the Gaussian Distribution Model?
A Gaussian distribution is a bell-shaped mathematical model in which the greatest weight is concentrated around a central value and progressively decreases as distance from that center increases. In this indicator, it is used as a weighting model to distribute a bar’s total buy and sell volume across its price rows, rather than assigning the same amount of volume to every level.
The simplified diagrams below illustrate the basic idea before we apply it separately to the buy and sell sides of a candle.
Figure 1 — A single bell distributes one total; no volume is created or lost
Figure 2 — Both bells cover the full range; only their centers differ, and each sums back to its own total
As the Volume Engine and its role in the settings menu were explained earlier, we will follow the same approach here for the Footprint structure and Gaussian model. The relevant settings will be introduced alongside these concepts so their practical effect on the indicator can be understood directly.
Ticks Per Row
This setting controls the row size only for PulseWire’s native Footprint engine. A value of 1 creates the finest available structure, with each row representing one minimum price increment of the symbol. Higher values group multiple ticks into wider native Footprint rows.
For the Geometric and Intrabar engines, this setting is not used. Their Gaussian price distribution is calculated on the indicator’s fixed one-tick price lattice, where each row corresponds to syminfo.mintick. This keeps their modeled price-level structure at the highest available symbol resolution.
Window Bars
This setting determines how many valid candle columns the footprint table displays. Its default value is 5, and it can be set from 2 to 60.
The important point is that Window Bars does not simply mean the last N consecutive candles. Starting from the current bar, the indicator scans backward and accepts a candle only when:
the active Volume Engine provides valid volume data for that candle,
its total calculated volume is greater than zero, and
its price range overlaps the price area currently displayed by the footprint table.
If a candle does not satisfy these conditions, it is skipped and the search continues farther back until the requested number of columns is collected.
This same selection logic applies to all three engines. The practical difference is only data availability: Geometric normally has data wherever chart volume exists, Intrabar is limited by the lower-timeframe history available to the selected plan, and Footprint requires valid native Footprint data for the candle.
The search can extend up to 5,000 historical bars. Therefore, Window Bars controls the number of qualifying columns displayed, not the chronological lookback period itself.
Ticks Above/Below
This setting defines the vertical price span of the footprint table around the current price. The default value is 5, with an adjustable range from 1 to 50.
A useful way to understand this behavior is to think of an analog aircraft altimeter. The reference point remains centered while the scale moves around it. In the same way, the indicator keeps the current price on the central row while the surrounding price ladder shifts as the market moves.
The selected value determines how many one-tick rows are shown above and below that center:
Visible Rows = (2 × Ticks Above/Below) + 1
For example, a value of 5 displays 11 price rows: five above the current price, five below it, and the central row itself.
This setting applies to all three Volume Engines and controls only the visible price frame. It does not alter the underlying volume calculation or the native row grouping of the Footprint engine. Volume outside the visible frame remains outside the display and is not merged into the boundary rows.
Like an analog altimeter — the needle stays put while the dial turns behind it
Volume Concentration
This setting controls the width of the Gaussian distributions used by the indicator. Its default value is 3.0, with an adjustable range from 1.0 to 10.0 in steps of 0.5.
The relationship is:
σ = (High − Low) / Volume Concentration
Therefore, a higher value produces a smaller σ and concentrates more volume around the center of each bell. A lower value produces a larger σ and spreads the volume more broadly toward the candle’s extremes.
For the footprint table, this setting affects the Gaussian price-row construction used by the Geometric and Intrabar engines. It does not modify the native price rows when the Footprint engine is selected, because those rows are read directly from PulseWire.
The same setting is also used later in the indicator’s Volume Profile construction. There, the common Gaussian profile model uses this concentration parameter regardless of which Volume Engine supplied the underlying buy and sell totals—including the Footprint engine.
Figure 1 — Higher concentration → narrower bell → more volume at the center row
Figure 2 — Concentration reshapes the row distribution, never the bar's total volume
Show Table
This setting controls whether the footprint table itself is displayed on the chart. It is enabled by default.
When Show Table is turned on, the price ladder and its candle columns are drawn according to the current footprint settings. Turning it off removes this table from the chart and provides a cleaner visual workspace.
Importantly, this option controls display only. It does not change the selected Volume Engine or the buy/sell volume values calculated by the indicator. Those volume figures remain available in PulseWire’s Data Window even when the footprint table is hidden.
Table Text Size & Table Position
Table Text Size controls the font size used inside the footprint table, allowing the display to be adjusted for readability or to accommodate larger tables.
Table Position determines where the footprint table is anchored on the chart by combining its vertical and horizontal placement options.
2. Point of Control (POC)
Now that the footprint structure and the distribution of buy and sell volume across price levels have been established, we can begin examining the information that can be derived from that structure. One of the most important of these concepts is the Point of Control (POC).
What Is the Point of Control?
The Point of Control is the price level at which the greatest total volume has traded within the analyzed distribution.
At each price level, buy and sell volume are combined:
Total Volume at Price = Buy Volume + Sell Volume
The price level with the highest resulting total becomes the POC.
The importance of the POC comes from what it represents: it identifies the price where market participation was most concentrated. In other words, within the analyzed structure, this is the level where the largest amount of business was conducted and therefore where price received the greatest volume-based acceptance.
The POC should not, however, be interpreted as a directional signal by itself. It identifies where the greatest activity occurred, not whether buyers or sellers dominated that activity. Directional information must be derived from the buy/sell composition and other footprint measurements surrounding that level.
Because the POC is calculated from a defined group of price-level data, its location also depends on the period or footprint window being analyzed. As the underlying volume distribution changes, the POC can shift to a different price level.
The POC marks where business concentrated — not which side won it
How the Indicator Uses the POC
Now that the meaning of the POC is clear, we can look one level deeper and see exactly how the indicator uses it. The POC is not treated as a single decorative level; it is calculated separately for the footprint table and the chart profile, then reused in several parts of the indicator.
A. Dashboard POC
Inside the footprint table, the indicator first sums the buy and sell volume of each visible price row across all qualifying Window Bars:
Row Volume = Σ Buy Volume + Σ Sell Volume
The visible price row with the largest combined volume becomes the Dashboard POC. This means the Dashboard POC belongs specifically to the footprint window currently being analyzed, not to the entire chart history.
B. POC marker and color in the table
The selected row is marked with ● POC in the Metrics column.
Its color describes the composition of that same price level:
Buy volume greater than sell volume → Buy color
Sell volume greater than buy volume → Sell color
Equal buy and sell volume → Neutral color
The color does not redefine the POC as bullish or bearish. The POC is still selected only by total volume; the color simply shows which side contributed more volume at that level.
The row information also retains the individual Sell, Buy, and Total volumes so the user can see what produced the POC.
C. Chart POC
The POC drawn beside the Volume Profile is calculated independently from the Dashboard POC.
Across the selected profile period, the indicator evaluates the Buy and Sell profile curves at successive price samples and combines them:
Combined Profile Intensity = Buy Density + Sell Density
The sampled price where this combined profile reaches its maximum becomes the Chart POC.
This distinction is important: the Dashboard POC is derived from the footprint table's visible price rows and Window Bars, while the Chart POC belongs to the separate Volume Profile period and its sampled profile structure. They can therefore appear at different prices without either calculation being incorrect.
D. POC and profile resolution
Because the Chart POC is found from the sampled Volume Profile curve, the profile's resolution determines how finely the indicator searches for its maximum. Increasing profile resolution provides a denser set of price samples and therefore a finer localization of the Chart POC, without changing the underlying volume itself.
E. POC as the starting point of Value Area
POC also has a structural role in the next concept we will discuss: Value Area.
Rather than finding Value Area independently, the indicator begins from the POC and expands outward through neighboring price levels until the selected percentage of volume has been accumulated. In this sense, POC is not only a displayed level; it is also the anchor from which the Value Area structure is built.
F. POC settings
The Point of Control setting determines where the metric is used:
Off
Dashboard
Chart
Dashboard and Chart
The accompanying offset controls how far the Chart POC line extends beyond the Volume Profile before its label is placed. It affects presentation, not the calculated POC price.
G. POC as an output level
The indicator also publishes the Dashboard POC and Chart POC as separate level series. This allows PulseWire's standard alert conditions—such as crossing, crossing up, or crossing down—to be applied to either level. We will return to this functionality in the Alerts section.
The key point is that when you see a POC in this indicator, you can identify exactly which dataset produced it, how its price was selected, what its color means, and where that level is used elsewhere in the calculation.
3. Value Area (VAH / VAL)
Once the POC identifies the price where volume is most concentrated, the next question is:
how far does that concentration extend?
The Value Area answers this by defining the price range that contains a selected share of the analyzed volume, commonly 70%.
The calculation begins at the POC and expands outward through neighboring price levels. At each step, the side containing the greater adjacent volume is added first. This process continues until the required percentage of total volume has been included.
The resulting boundaries are:
VAH — Value Area High: the upper boundary of the Value Area.
VAL — Value Area Low: the lower boundary of the Value Area.
Conceptually, the structure can be pictured as:
VAL ← accepted volume ← POC → accepted volume → VAH
The POC marks the center of greatest volume concentration, while VAH and VAL define the broader region around it where most of the analyzed trading activity took place.
Prices inside this range represent the market’s main area of volume acceptance for the selected dataset; prices outside it belong to the lower-volume remainder of the distribution.
POC sits at the peak of the combined curve; VAH and VAL mark its 70% edges
How Value Area Appears in the Indicator
The same Value Area concept is presented in two analytical contexts:
Dashboard:
The calculation uses the volume distribution of the current Footprint Window. Starting from its POC, the indicator expands toward neighboring rows until the selected volume percentage is reached. The resulting boundaries are marked directly in the Metrics column as ▲ VAH and ▼ VAL, so the accepted-volume region can be read against the footprint price ladder.
Chart:
The chart uses the Volume Profile period rather than the Footprint Window. Its own POC becomes the starting reference, and the Value Area is calculated from the profile’s volume distribution. The resulting VAH and VAL are then drawn as horizontal levels around the profile, making the high-volume acceptance range visible directly on the chart.
Because the Dashboard and Chart analyze different datasets, their POC, VAH, and VAL levels do not necessarily have to coincide.
The Value Area setting determines whether these levels are calculated and displayed in the Dashboard, Chart, Dashboard and Chart, or turned Off. The percentage beside it defines the target share of volume, with 70% as the default.
4. Volume Imbalance
Once we know where volume concentrated, the next question is whether one side became unusually dominant at a particular price. Volume Imbalance is designed to identify exactly that condition.
Unlike a simple comparison of Buy and Sell volume on the same row, footprint imbalance is measured diagonally between neighboring price levels:
Buy Imbalance:
Buy volume at a price is compared with Sell volume one row below.
Sell Imbalance:
Sell volume at a price is compared with Buy volume one row above.
With the default threshold of 300%, the dominant side must exceed the opposing diagonal volume by more than three times before the level is classified as imbalanced.
Conceptually:
Buy Imbalance:
Buy(current row) > Sell(row below) × Threshold
Sell Imbalance:
Sell(current row) > Buy(row above) × Threshold
This diagonal comparison is important because it compares opposing activity across the neighboring prices where buyers and sellers effectively meet, rather than treating each row as an isolated number.
How the Indicator Uses Imbalance
Geometric and Intrabar:
The same diagonal rule is applied to the price rows constructed by the indicator.
Footprint:
When the native Footprint engine is selected, the indicator uses PulseWire's own per-row Buy and Sell imbalance results. The selected Imbalance percentage is passed directly into the native Footprint request.
Footprint Table:
An imbalanced Buy or Sell cell receives a directional marker and stronger visual emphasis, making individual imbalances visible inside each candle column.
Dashboard Metrics:
The indicator also evaluates the combined Buy and Sell distribution across the complete Footprint Window. Price levels that satisfy the diagonal imbalance rule at the window level are marked in the Metrics column, allowing isolated candle imbalances to be distinguished from imbalance that persists across the broader window.
Chart:
For the Volume Profile period, imbalance is evaluated from the profile's Buy and Sell distribution and qualifying levels are shown as dotted horizontal marks on the chart.
Imbalance Setting
The Imbalance setting enables or disables these measurements, while the percentage beside it controls how strong the diagonal dominance must be. The default is 300%; increasing it requires a stronger imbalance, while decreasing it makes the measurement more sensitive.
The important distinction is that imbalance identifies relative dominance at specific neighboring prices. It does not simply tell us which side has more total volume across the candle or profile.
Figure 1 — Buy vs sell one row below · sell vs buy one row above · threshold 300%
Figure 2 — A buy imbalance needs the buy row to beat the sell row below it by the threshold
Figure 3 — Sell(P) > Buy(P + 1) × threshold · the buy rule flipped upside down
5. Delta and Totals
After identifying where volume is concentrated and where local imbalances appear, the same Buy/Sell data can be summarized through two direct measurements: Total Volume and Delta.
Total Volume shows how much activity occurred:
Total = Buy Volume + Sell Volume
Delta shows the difference between the two sides:
Delta = Buy Volume − Sell Volume
A positive Delta means Buy volume was greater, while a negative Delta means Sell volume was greater. A value near zero indicates that the two sides contributed similar amounts of volume.
The important distinction is that Delta measures volume dominance, not price direction. A candle can rise while having negative Delta, or fall while having positive Delta, because price movement and Buy/Sell volume balance describe different aspects of market activity.
How They Appear in the Dashboard
At the bottom of each Footprint candle column, the indicator displays:
Total: the complete Buy + Sell volume of that candle.
Delta: the Buy − Sell difference for that candle.
Positive Delta is displayed in the Buy color and negative Delta in the Sell color, while Total remains neutral.
The Sum column applies the same calculation to the entire Footprint Window. It combines the Buy and Sell totals of all qualifying Window Bars and reports:
Window Total = Σ Buy + Σ Sell
Window Delta = Σ Buy − Σ Sell
This allows the user to compare the balance of an individual candle with the broader balance of the complete Footprint Window.
Current-Bar Summary
The status bar at the top of the table also provides a live summary of the current candle, including its Total Volume, Sell Volume, Buy Volume, and the side currently leading.
The lead percentage measures how large the Buy/Sell difference is relative to the candle's total volume:
Lead % = |Buy − Sell| / Total × 100
This makes it possible to distinguish between a small numerical advantage and a genuinely meaningful difference in participation.
The background color of this status bar follows the candle's price change, not its Delta. Therefore, price direction and volume dominance remain intentionally separate.
On the Chart
Total and Delta are not drawn as independent horizontal levels on the chart. Instead, their underlying Buy and Sell volumes continue into the Volume Profile calculations, where the distribution and broader balance between the two sides are analyzed in greater detail.
So while Imbalance asks where one side became unusually dominant at specific neighboring prices, Delta answers a broader question:
Which side carried more volume over this candle or window, and by how much?
6. The Volume Profile
The Footprint shows volume inside individual candles. The Volume Profile takes the next step and combines that information across a selected period to show where Buy and Sell activity accumulated through price.
Instead of one conventional profile, the indicator builds two separate distributions:
Buy Profile
Sell Profile
For every bar in the selected period, its Buy and Sell totals are distributed through that bar’s High–Low range using the same Gaussian framework introduced earlier. These individual distributions are then added together to create the two final profile curves.
An important distinction is that this common profile model is used for all three Volume Engines. Even when the Footprint engine is selected, the chart profile is constructed from its bar-level Buy and Sell totals rather than directly reproducing PulseWire’s native footprint rows. This gives all engines the same mathematical basis for profile comparison.
How It Appears on the Chart
The profile spans from the lowest Low to the highest High of the selected period and is drawn to the right of the latest candle.
Both curves grow from the same baseline and use the same horizontal scale, so their relative widths remain meaningful:
Wider Buy curve → greater Buy intensity at that price
Wider Sell curve → greater Sell intensity at that price
Where the two filled curves overlap, the chart also makes the shared price territory visually apparent.
This profile becomes the foundation for several measurements already introduced or still to come, including Chart POC, VAH/VAL, profile Imbalances, OVL, Balance Tilt, and the Residual self-check.
Main Profile Settings
Profile Period: number of bars included in the calculation.
Profile Width: horizontal drawing size of the profile.
Profile Resolution: number of price samples used to trace the curves; higher values produce finer visual resolution without changing the underlying volume model.
Buy / Sell visibility, Fill and Colors: control presentation only.
In short, the Footprint answers what happened inside each candle, while the Volume Profile reorganizes the same Buy/Sell information around price across an entire period.
Same horizontal scale on both sides — so relative widths are directly comparable
7. Overlapping Coefficient (OVL) and Balance Tilt
The Buy and Sell profiles tell us where each side was active. The next question is:
how much did they operate at the same prices?
The Overlapping Coefficient (OVL) measures this shared price territory.
Before comparison, the Buy and Sell profiles are normalized so that differences in total volume do not distort their shapes. The indicator then measures the common area between the two distributions.
Conceptually:
OVL = Shared Area of the Normalized Buy and Sell Profiles
Its range is:
0.00 → almost no overlap
1.00 → complete overlap
A high OVL means Buy and Sell activity occurred largely at the same prices. A low OVL means the two sides occupied increasingly different price regions.
How the Indicator Interprets OVL
The indicator uses 0.75 as its balance boundary:
OVL ≥ 0.75 → BALANCED
OVL < 0.75 → OFF BALANCE
But OVL alone tells us only that the distributions have separated; it does not tell us which side carried more total volume. For that, the indicator uses Balance Tilt:
Balance Tilt = (Buy Volume − Sell Volume) / Total Volume × 100
Positive values lean toward Buy, while negative values lean toward Sell.
The Balance Tilt % setting determines how large this difference must be before a direction is named. Its default is 5%.
Therefore, when OVL is below 0.75, the chart can report:
OFF BALANCE TO BUY
OFF BALANCE TO SELL
OFF BALANCE — when the volume difference is too small to assign a direction confidently.
On the Chart
The OVL reading appears at the top of the Volume Profile and reports both the coefficient and its interpretation.
This gives two complementary pieces of information:
OVL → Are Buy and Sell occurring at the same prices?
Tilt → If not, which side carries more total volume?
OVL: how much do buy and sell share the same prices?
Balance Tilt: which side carried more total volume
Two questions, answered in order
OVL asks how much the sides share the same prices; Tilt names the heavier side only when OVL says off balance
OVL measures shared prices · Tilt classifies direction when off balance · together they read the profile's balance
8. Residual Self-Check (RES)
Because the Volume Profile is built mathematically, the indicator also verifies that its own reconstruction has not created or lost meaningful volume.
For each side, it compares the original Buy or Sell total with the volume recovered from the complete profile model—including the Gaussian curves and any zero-range bars represented as point masses.
Conceptually:
Residual = Difference between original volume and reconstructed profile volume
The Buy and Sell errors are combined and expressed in parts per million (PPM). A value close to zero means the profile reproduces its source volume with extremely small numerical error.
How It Appears on the Chart
The RES reading is displayed beneath the Volume Profile:
EXACT — Residual is within the permitted tolerance.
DRIFT — Residual exceeds that tolerance.
The default Residual Tolerance is 1 PPM. Lower values make the self-check stricter; higher values allow more numerical deviation.
RES is therefore not a market signal. It is a diagnostic of the indicator itself: a confirmation that the profile you are analyzing remains mathematically consistent with the volume from which it was constructed.
9. Remaining Settings
Most analytical settings have already been explained alongside the concepts they control. Only a few display-related controls remain:
Balance Tilt % sets the minimum Buy/Sell volume difference required before an off-balance profile is labeled toward Buy or Sell. The default is 5%.
Residual Tolerance PPM defines the maximum RES value still classified as EXACT. The default is 1 PPM.
Label Merge Ticks controls how close chart labels may be before they are combined to prevent overlap. A value of 0 keeps nearby labels separate.
Frame Lines control only the color, thickness, and style of the Volume Profile boundary lines.
The remaining profile visibility, colors, fill opacity, width, and resolution settings affect presentation only and were introduced with the Volume Profile itself.
10. Alerts
The indicator does not impose a predefined trading signal. Instead, it publishes its two POC levels as separate series so they can be used directly inside PulseWire’s standard Alert dialog:
Dashboard POC — the POC calculated from the current Footprint Window.
Chart POC — the POC calculated from the Volume Profile period.
After selecting either series as the alert source, PulseWire’s normal conditions can be applied, including actions such as:
Crossing · Crossing Up · Crossing Down · Greater Than · Less Than
This keeps the alert logic flexible. The indicator provides the calculated level; the user decides what interaction between price and that level is important for the strategy being monitored.
For example:
Price crosses above Chart POC → Crossing Up
Price crosses below Dashboard POC → Crossing Down
Dashboard POC and Chart POC remain independent, so an alert can be built around either the short footprint window or the broader profile structure.
Publisher’s Note
Volume is one of the fundamental dimensions of market analysis because it reveals the level of participation behind price and helps us understand where trading activity is taking place.
This indicator was created first to make Footprint concepts accessible across PulseWire plans. The Geometric and Intrabar engines provide approximate Buy/Sell representations, while the Footprint engine uses PulseWire’s official native price-level data where available.
An important part of the project was to place these different data sources inside a common mathematical framework. PulseWire’s native Footprint presents its price-level structure directly as footprint rows, while this indicator also uses Gaussian mathematics and price geometry to construct a comparable Buy/Sell Volume Profile from the bar-level totals of all three engines. In this way, different sources can be examined through the same analytical language rather than through unrelated visual forms.
The purpose is not to claim that an approximation is equivalent to native data. It is to make the differences measurable, understandable, and comparable. For users who enjoy investigating how markets are represented—and how different methods arrive at their results—the three engines can themselves become an interesting field of study.
Ultimately, the goal is simple: to move from merely seeing volume to understanding its structure.
Volume tells you how much traded. A footprint tells you where.
A conventional volume bar compresses all trading activity within a candle into a single total. That total measures participation, but it does not show how the activity was distributed through price. Two candles can carry similar volume and range while containing very different internal structures.
A volume footprint restores this missing dimension. It organizes a bar's volume across price levels and separates buying from selling, so the candle becomes a readable column: where activity concentrated, where one side dominated, and where the two sides met.
This price-level structure is the basis for the measurements and diagnostics used throughout this indicator.
1. The volume footprint
As introduced above, a footprint reveals the role and position of the real participants inside a candle. The diagram below illustrates the structure:
The diagram shows the footprint structure of a single candle: volume is distributed across price levels and separated into sell and buy activity. This makes the internal distribution of participation visible instead of reducing the candle to one total volume figure.
The real challenge in constructing a footprint is how buy and sell volume are derived. PulseWire’s native Footprint data provides the highest-fidelity source used by this indicator, but it is available only on Premium and Ultimate plans. To make the concept accessible to users on other plans, we therefore estimate buy and sell volume using the alternative methods described below. These methods are approximations, intended to explain and visualize footprint mechanics—not to claim the same precision as PulseWire’s native Footprint data.
Buy/Sell Volume Calculation Engines
The indicator uses three methods as engines for calculating buy and sell volume. These engines are selected from the Engine option in the indicator settings and will be explained individually below.
- Geometric
- Intrabar
- Footprint
A. Geometric Calculation Engine
The Geometric engine estimates buy and sell volume from the position of the candle’s close within its high–low range. A close nearer the high assigns a larger share to buying volume, while a close nearer the low assigns a larger share to selling volume.
As shown in the image, the Geometric engine is an estimation model based on the position of the candle’s close within its high–low range. Buy and sell volume are calculated as:
If the candle has no range, volume is divided equally between buying and selling.
It is important to emphasize that this is an estimated representation of buy and sell activity, not true transaction-side volume. However, it can still provide a useful analytical framework for markets where reported volume is incomplete, fragmented, or not representative of a centralized market-wide feed, such as many cryptocurrency markets and spot gold.
B. Intrabar Calculation Engine
The Intrabar engine derives buy and sell volume from lower-timeframe activity inside each chart bar, using PulseWire’s official ta library. Instead of estimating the split from the shape of the parent candle, it aggregates the lower-timeframe up and down volume returned by the library.
Higher intrabar resolution generally provides greater precision, but also reduces the amount of historical coverage available. Tick-level data offers the finest resolution where available, while a 1-minute lower timeframe provides a practical alternative that can also be used on lower PulseWire plans. On higher chart timeframes, such as 4-hour or daily charts, the 1-minute series can provide a substantially finer approximation of the internal buy/sell structure than calculations based only on the parent candle.
In practical terms, Intrabar provides the middle ground between simple candle-based estimation and native Footprint data: more granular than Geometric, yet still accessible across a wider range of PulseWire plans. Its effectiveness ultimately depends on how much lower-timeframe detail is available for the chart being analyzed.
C. Footprint Calculation Engine
The Footprint engine reads PulseWire’s native volume-footprint data directly. Unlike the Geometric and Intrabar engines, buy and sell volume are not inferred from candle geometry or lower-timeframe direction; they are obtained from PulseWire’s own price-level footprint structure.
This provides the highest-fidelity volume source used by the indicator and serves as the reference engine for footprint-based measurements. Access to this data requires a PulseWire Premium or Ultimate plan.
How are the footprint price rows constructed when native row-level data is available only through PulseWire’s Footprint engine on Premium and Ultimate plans?
For the native Footprint engine, each price row is read directly from PulseWire together with its buy and sell volume. For the Geometric and Intrabar engines, only bar-level buy and sell totals are available, so these totals must be distributed across the candle’s price range. To accomplish this, the indicator uses a Gaussian distribution model.
What Is the Gaussian Distribution Model?
A Gaussian distribution is a bell-shaped mathematical model in which the greatest weight is concentrated around a central value and progressively decreases as distance from that center increases. In this indicator, it is used as a weighting model to distribute a bar’s total buy and sell volume across its price rows, rather than assigning the same amount of volume to every level.
The simplified diagrams below illustrate the basic idea before we apply it separately to the buy and sell sides of a candle.
Figure 1 — A single bell distributes one total; no volume is created or lost
Figure 2 — Both bells cover the full range; only their centers differ, and each sums back to its own total
As the Volume Engine and its role in the settings menu were explained earlier, we will follow the same approach here for the Footprint structure and Gaussian model. The relevant settings will be introduced alongside these concepts so their practical effect on the indicator can be understood directly.
Ticks Per Row
This setting controls the row size only for PulseWire’s native Footprint engine. A value of 1 creates the finest available structure, with each row representing one minimum price increment of the symbol. Higher values group multiple ticks into wider native Footprint rows.
For the Geometric and Intrabar engines, this setting is not used. Their Gaussian price distribution is calculated on the indicator’s fixed one-tick price lattice, where each row corresponds to syminfo.mintick. This keeps their modeled price-level structure at the highest available symbol resolution.
Window Bars
This setting determines how many valid candle columns the footprint table displays. Its default value is 5, and it can be set from 2 to 60.
The important point is that Window Bars does not simply mean the last N consecutive candles. Starting from the current bar, the indicator scans backward and accepts a candle only when:
the active Volume Engine provides valid volume data for that candle,
its total calculated volume is greater than zero, and
its price range overlaps the price area currently displayed by the footprint table.
If a candle does not satisfy these conditions, it is skipped and the search continues farther back until the requested number of columns is collected.
This same selection logic applies to all three engines. The practical difference is only data availability: Geometric normally has data wherever chart volume exists, Intrabar is limited by the lower-timeframe history available to the selected plan, and Footprint requires valid native Footprint data for the candle.
The search can extend up to 5,000 historical bars. Therefore, Window Bars controls the number of qualifying columns displayed, not the chronological lookback period itself.
Ticks Above/Below
This setting defines the vertical price span of the footprint table around the current price. The default value is 5, with an adjustable range from 1 to 50.
A useful way to understand this behavior is to think of an analog aircraft altimeter. The reference point remains centered while the scale moves around it. In the same way, the indicator keeps the current price on the central row while the surrounding price ladder shifts as the market moves.
The selected value determines how many one-tick rows are shown above and below that center:
Visible Rows = (2 × Ticks Above/Below) + 1
For example, a value of 5 displays 11 price rows: five above the current price, five below it, and the central row itself.
This setting applies to all three Volume Engines and controls only the visible price frame. It does not alter the underlying volume calculation or the native row grouping of the Footprint engine. Volume outside the visible frame remains outside the display and is not merged into the boundary rows.
Like an analog altimeter — the needle stays put while the dial turns behind it
Volume Concentration
This setting controls the width of the Gaussian distributions used by the indicator. Its default value is 3.0, with an adjustable range from 1.0 to 10.0 in steps of 0.5.
The relationship is:
σ = (High − Low) / Volume Concentration
Therefore, a higher value produces a smaller σ and concentrates more volume around the center of each bell. A lower value produces a larger σ and spreads the volume more broadly toward the candle’s extremes.
For the footprint table, this setting affects the Gaussian price-row construction used by the Geometric and Intrabar engines. It does not modify the native price rows when the Footprint engine is selected, because those rows are read directly from PulseWire.
The same setting is also used later in the indicator’s Volume Profile construction. There, the common Gaussian profile model uses this concentration parameter regardless of which Volume Engine supplied the underlying buy and sell totals—including the Footprint engine.
Figure 1 — Higher concentration → narrower bell → more volume at the center row
Figure 2 — Concentration reshapes the row distribution, never the bar's total volume
Show Table
This setting controls whether the footprint table itself is displayed on the chart. It is enabled by default.
When Show Table is turned on, the price ladder and its candle columns are drawn according to the current footprint settings. Turning it off removes this table from the chart and provides a cleaner visual workspace.
Importantly, this option controls display only. It does not change the selected Volume Engine or the buy/sell volume values calculated by the indicator. Those volume figures remain available in PulseWire’s Data Window even when the footprint table is hidden.
Table Text Size & Table Position
Table Text Size controls the font size used inside the footprint table, allowing the display to be adjusted for readability or to accommodate larger tables.
Table Position determines where the footprint table is anchored on the chart by combining its vertical and horizontal placement options.
2. Point of Control (POC)
Now that the footprint structure and the distribution of buy and sell volume across price levels have been established, we can begin examining the information that can be derived from that structure. One of the most important of these concepts is the Point of Control (POC).
What Is the Point of Control?
The Point of Control is the price level at which the greatest total volume has traded within the analyzed distribution.
At each price level, buy and sell volume are combined:
Total Volume at Price = Buy Volume + Sell Volume
The price level with the highest resulting total becomes the POC.
The importance of the POC comes from what it represents: it identifies the price where market participation was most concentrated. In other words, within the analyzed structure, this is the level where the largest amount of business was conducted and therefore where price received the greatest volume-based acceptance.
The POC should not, however, be interpreted as a directional signal by itself. It identifies where the greatest activity occurred, not whether buyers or sellers dominated that activity. Directional information must be derived from the buy/sell composition and other footprint measurements surrounding that level.
Because the POC is calculated from a defined group of price-level data, its location also depends on the period or footprint window being analyzed. As the underlying volume distribution changes, the POC can shift to a different price level.
The POC marks where business concentrated — not which side won it
How the Indicator Uses the POC
Now that the meaning of the POC is clear, we can look one level deeper and see exactly how the indicator uses it. The POC is not treated as a single decorative level; it is calculated separately for the footprint table and the chart profile, then reused in several parts of the indicator.
A. Dashboard POC
Inside the footprint table, the indicator first sums the buy and sell volume of each visible price row across all qualifying Window Bars:
Row Volume = Σ Buy Volume + Σ Sell Volume
The visible price row with the largest combined volume becomes the Dashboard POC. This means the Dashboard POC belongs specifically to the footprint window currently being analyzed, not to the entire chart history.
B. POC marker and color in the table
The selected row is marked with ● POC in the Metrics column.
Its color describes the composition of that same price level:
Buy volume greater than sell volume → Buy color
Sell volume greater than buy volume → Sell color
Equal buy and sell volume → Neutral color
The color does not redefine the POC as bullish or bearish. The POC is still selected only by total volume; the color simply shows which side contributed more volume at that level.
The row information also retains the individual Sell, Buy, and Total volumes so the user can see what produced the POC.
C. Chart POC
The POC drawn beside the Volume Profile is calculated independently from the Dashboard POC.
Across the selected profile period, the indicator evaluates the Buy and Sell profile curves at successive price samples and combines them:
Combined Profile Intensity = Buy Density + Sell Density
The sampled price where this combined profile reaches its maximum becomes the Chart POC.
This distinction is important: the Dashboard POC is derived from the footprint table's visible price rows and Window Bars, while the Chart POC belongs to the separate Volume Profile period and its sampled profile structure. They can therefore appear at different prices without either calculation being incorrect.
D. POC and profile resolution
Because the Chart POC is found from the sampled Volume Profile curve, the profile's resolution determines how finely the indicator searches for its maximum. Increasing profile resolution provides a denser set of price samples and therefore a finer localization of the Chart POC, without changing the underlying volume itself.
E. POC as the starting point of Value Area
POC also has a structural role in the next concept we will discuss: Value Area.
Rather than finding Value Area independently, the indicator begins from the POC and expands outward through neighboring price levels until the selected percentage of volume has been accumulated. In this sense, POC is not only a displayed level; it is also the anchor from which the Value Area structure is built.
F. POC settings
The Point of Control setting determines where the metric is used:
Off
Dashboard
Chart
Dashboard and Chart
The accompanying offset controls how far the Chart POC line extends beyond the Volume Profile before its label is placed. It affects presentation, not the calculated POC price.
G. POC as an output level
The indicator also publishes the Dashboard POC and Chart POC as separate level series. This allows PulseWire's standard alert conditions—such as crossing, crossing up, or crossing down—to be applied to either level. We will return to this functionality in the Alerts section.
The key point is that when you see a POC in this indicator, you can identify exactly which dataset produced it, how its price was selected, what its color means, and where that level is used elsewhere in the calculation.
3. Value Area (VAH / VAL)
Once the POC identifies the price where volume is most concentrated, the next question is:
how far does that concentration extend?
The Value Area answers this by defining the price range that contains a selected share of the analyzed volume, commonly 70%.
The calculation begins at the POC and expands outward through neighboring price levels. At each step, the side containing the greater adjacent volume is added first. This process continues until the required percentage of total volume has been included.
The resulting boundaries are:
VAH — Value Area High: the upper boundary of the Value Area.
VAL — Value Area Low: the lower boundary of the Value Area.
Conceptually, the structure can be pictured as:
VAL ← accepted volume ← POC → accepted volume → VAH
The POC marks the center of greatest volume concentration, while VAH and VAL define the broader region around it where most of the analyzed trading activity took place.
Prices inside this range represent the market’s main area of volume acceptance for the selected dataset; prices outside it belong to the lower-volume remainder of the distribution.
POC sits at the peak of the combined curve; VAH and VAL mark its 70% edges
How Value Area Appears in the Indicator
The same Value Area concept is presented in two analytical contexts:
Dashboard:
The calculation uses the volume distribution of the current Footprint Window. Starting from its POC, the indicator expands toward neighboring rows until the selected volume percentage is reached. The resulting boundaries are marked directly in the Metrics column as ▲ VAH and ▼ VAL, so the accepted-volume region can be read against the footprint price ladder.
Chart:
The chart uses the Volume Profile period rather than the Footprint Window. Its own POC becomes the starting reference, and the Value Area is calculated from the profile’s volume distribution. The resulting VAH and VAL are then drawn as horizontal levels around the profile, making the high-volume acceptance range visible directly on the chart.
Because the Dashboard and Chart analyze different datasets, their POC, VAH, and VAL levels do not necessarily have to coincide.
The Value Area setting determines whether these levels are calculated and displayed in the Dashboard, Chart, Dashboard and Chart, or turned Off. The percentage beside it defines the target share of volume, with 70% as the default.
4. Volume Imbalance
Once we know where volume concentrated, the next question is whether one side became unusually dominant at a particular price. Volume Imbalance is designed to identify exactly that condition.
Unlike a simple comparison of Buy and Sell volume on the same row, footprint imbalance is measured diagonally between neighboring price levels:
Buy Imbalance:
Buy volume at a price is compared with Sell volume one row below.
Sell Imbalance:
Sell volume at a price is compared with Buy volume one row above.
With the default threshold of 300%, the dominant side must exceed the opposing diagonal volume by more than three times before the level is classified as imbalanced.
Conceptually:
Buy Imbalance:
Buy(current row) > Sell(row below) × Threshold
Sell Imbalance:
Sell(current row) > Buy(row above) × Threshold
This diagonal comparison is important because it compares opposing activity across the neighboring prices where buyers and sellers effectively meet, rather than treating each row as an isolated number.
How the Indicator Uses Imbalance
Geometric and Intrabar:
The same diagonal rule is applied to the price rows constructed by the indicator.
Footprint:
When the native Footprint engine is selected, the indicator uses PulseWire's own per-row Buy and Sell imbalance results. The selected Imbalance percentage is passed directly into the native Footprint request.
Footprint Table:
An imbalanced Buy or Sell cell receives a directional marker and stronger visual emphasis, making individual imbalances visible inside each candle column.
Dashboard Metrics:
The indicator also evaluates the combined Buy and Sell distribution across the complete Footprint Window. Price levels that satisfy the diagonal imbalance rule at the window level are marked in the Metrics column, allowing isolated candle imbalances to be distinguished from imbalance that persists across the broader window.
Chart:
For the Volume Profile period, imbalance is evaluated from the profile's Buy and Sell distribution and qualifying levels are shown as dotted horizontal marks on the chart.
Imbalance Setting
The Imbalance setting enables or disables these measurements, while the percentage beside it controls how strong the diagonal dominance must be. The default is 300%; increasing it requires a stronger imbalance, while decreasing it makes the measurement more sensitive.
The important distinction is that imbalance identifies relative dominance at specific neighboring prices. It does not simply tell us which side has more total volume across the candle or profile.
Figure 1 — Buy vs sell one row below · sell vs buy one row above · threshold 300%
Figure 2 — A buy imbalance needs the buy row to beat the sell row below it by the threshold
Figure 3 — Sell(P) > Buy(P + 1) × threshold · the buy rule flipped upside down
5. Delta and Totals
After identifying where volume is concentrated and where local imbalances appear, the same Buy/Sell data can be summarized through two direct measurements: Total Volume and Delta.
Total Volume shows how much activity occurred:
Total = Buy Volume + Sell Volume
Delta shows the difference between the two sides:
Delta = Buy Volume − Sell Volume
A positive Delta means Buy volume was greater, while a negative Delta means Sell volume was greater. A value near zero indicates that the two sides contributed similar amounts of volume.
The important distinction is that Delta measures volume dominance, not price direction. A candle can rise while having negative Delta, or fall while having positive Delta, because price movement and Buy/Sell volume balance describe different aspects of market activity.
How They Appear in the Dashboard
At the bottom of each Footprint candle column, the indicator displays:
Total: the complete Buy + Sell volume of that candle.
Delta: the Buy − Sell difference for that candle.
Positive Delta is displayed in the Buy color and negative Delta in the Sell color, while Total remains neutral.
The Sum column applies the same calculation to the entire Footprint Window. It combines the Buy and Sell totals of all qualifying Window Bars and reports:
Window Total = Σ Buy + Σ Sell
Window Delta = Σ Buy − Σ Sell
This allows the user to compare the balance of an individual candle with the broader balance of the complete Footprint Window.
Current-Bar Summary
The status bar at the top of the table also provides a live summary of the current candle, including its Total Volume, Sell Volume, Buy Volume, and the side currently leading.
The lead percentage measures how large the Buy/Sell difference is relative to the candle's total volume:
Lead % = |Buy − Sell| / Total × 100
This makes it possible to distinguish between a small numerical advantage and a genuinely meaningful difference in participation.
The background color of this status bar follows the candle's price change, not its Delta. Therefore, price direction and volume dominance remain intentionally separate.
On the Chart
Total and Delta are not drawn as independent horizontal levels on the chart. Instead, their underlying Buy and Sell volumes continue into the Volume Profile calculations, where the distribution and broader balance between the two sides are analyzed in greater detail.
So while Imbalance asks where one side became unusually dominant at specific neighboring prices, Delta answers a broader question:
Which side carried more volume over this candle or window, and by how much?
6. The Volume Profile
The Footprint shows volume inside individual candles. The Volume Profile takes the next step and combines that information across a selected period to show where Buy and Sell activity accumulated through price.
Instead of one conventional profile, the indicator builds two separate distributions:
Buy Profile
Sell Profile
For every bar in the selected period, its Buy and Sell totals are distributed through that bar’s High–Low range using the same Gaussian framework introduced earlier. These individual distributions are then added together to create the two final profile curves.
An important distinction is that this common profile model is used for all three Volume Engines. Even when the Footprint engine is selected, the chart profile is constructed from its bar-level Buy and Sell totals rather than directly reproducing PulseWire’s native footprint rows. This gives all engines the same mathematical basis for profile comparison.
How It Appears on the Chart
The profile spans from the lowest Low to the highest High of the selected period and is drawn to the right of the latest candle.
Both curves grow from the same baseline and use the same horizontal scale, so their relative widths remain meaningful:
Wider Buy curve → greater Buy intensity at that price
Wider Sell curve → greater Sell intensity at that price
Where the two filled curves overlap, the chart also makes the shared price territory visually apparent.
This profile becomes the foundation for several measurements already introduced or still to come, including Chart POC, VAH/VAL, profile Imbalances, OVL, Balance Tilt, and the Residual self-check.
Main Profile Settings
Profile Period: number of bars included in the calculation.
Profile Width: horizontal drawing size of the profile.
Profile Resolution: number of price samples used to trace the curves; higher values produce finer visual resolution without changing the underlying volume model.
Buy / Sell visibility, Fill and Colors: control presentation only.
In short, the Footprint answers what happened inside each candle, while the Volume Profile reorganizes the same Buy/Sell information around price across an entire period.
Same horizontal scale on both sides — so relative widths are directly comparable
7. Overlapping Coefficient (OVL) and Balance Tilt
The Buy and Sell profiles tell us where each side was active. The next question is:
how much did they operate at the same prices?
The Overlapping Coefficient (OVL) measures this shared price territory.
Before comparison, the Buy and Sell profiles are normalized so that differences in total volume do not distort their shapes. The indicator then measures the common area between the two distributions.
Conceptually:
OVL = Shared Area of the Normalized Buy and Sell Profiles
Its range is:
0.00 → almost no overlap
1.00 → complete overlap
A high OVL means Buy and Sell activity occurred largely at the same prices. A low OVL means the two sides occupied increasingly different price regions.
How the Indicator Interprets OVL
The indicator uses 0.75 as its balance boundary:
OVL ≥ 0.75 → BALANCED
OVL < 0.75 → OFF BALANCE
But OVL alone tells us only that the distributions have separated; it does not tell us which side carried more total volume. For that, the indicator uses Balance Tilt:
Balance Tilt = (Buy Volume − Sell Volume) / Total Volume × 100
Positive values lean toward Buy, while negative values lean toward Sell.
The Balance Tilt % setting determines how large this difference must be before a direction is named. Its default is 5%.
Therefore, when OVL is below 0.75, the chart can report:
OFF BALANCE TO BUY
OFF BALANCE TO SELL
OFF BALANCE — when the volume difference is too small to assign a direction confidently.
On the Chart
The OVL reading appears at the top of the Volume Profile and reports both the coefficient and its interpretation.
This gives two complementary pieces of information:
OVL → Are Buy and Sell occurring at the same prices?
Tilt → If not, which side carries more total volume?
OVL: how much do buy and sell share the same prices?
Balance Tilt: which side carried more total volume
Two questions, answered in order
OVL asks how much the sides share the same prices; Tilt names the heavier side only when OVL says off balance
OVL measures shared prices · Tilt classifies direction when off balance · together they read the profile's balance
8. Residual Self-Check (RES)
Because the Volume Profile is built mathematically, the indicator also verifies that its own reconstruction has not created or lost meaningful volume.
For each side, it compares the original Buy or Sell total with the volume recovered from the complete profile model—including the Gaussian curves and any zero-range bars represented as point masses.
Conceptually:
Residual = Difference between original volume and reconstructed profile volume
The Buy and Sell errors are combined and expressed in parts per million (PPM). A value close to zero means the profile reproduces its source volume with extremely small numerical error.
How It Appears on the Chart
The RES reading is displayed beneath the Volume Profile:
EXACT — Residual is within the permitted tolerance.
DRIFT — Residual exceeds that tolerance.
The default Residual Tolerance is 1 PPM. Lower values make the self-check stricter; higher values allow more numerical deviation.
RES is therefore not a market signal. It is a diagnostic of the indicator itself: a confirmation that the profile you are analyzing remains mathematically consistent with the volume from which it was constructed.
9. Remaining Settings
Most analytical settings have already been explained alongside the concepts they control. Only a few display-related controls remain:
Balance Tilt % sets the minimum Buy/Sell volume difference required before an off-balance profile is labeled toward Buy or Sell. The default is 5%.
Residual Tolerance PPM defines the maximum RES value still classified as EXACT. The default is 1 PPM.
Label Merge Ticks controls how close chart labels may be before they are combined to prevent overlap. A value of 0 keeps nearby labels separate.
Frame Lines control only the color, thickness, and style of the Volume Profile boundary lines.
The remaining profile visibility, colors, fill opacity, width, and resolution settings affect presentation only and were introduced with the Volume Profile itself.
10. Alerts
The indicator does not impose a predefined trading signal. Instead, it publishes its two POC levels as separate series so they can be used directly inside PulseWire’s standard Alert dialog:
Dashboard POC — the POC calculated from the current Footprint Window.
Chart POC — the POC calculated from the Volume Profile period.
After selecting either series as the alert source, PulseWire’s normal conditions can be applied, including actions such as:
Crossing · Crossing Up · Crossing Down · Greater Than · Less Than
This keeps the alert logic flexible. The indicator provides the calculated level; the user decides what interaction between price and that level is important for the strategy being monitored.
For example:
Price crosses above Chart POC → Crossing Up
Price crosses below Dashboard POC → Crossing Down
Dashboard POC and Chart POC remain independent, so an alert can be built around either the short footprint window or the broader profile structure.
Publisher’s Note
Volume is one of the fundamental dimensions of market analysis because it reveals the level of participation behind price and helps us understand where trading activity is taking place.
This indicator was created first to make Footprint concepts accessible across PulseWire plans. The Geometric and Intrabar engines provide approximate Buy/Sell representations, while the Footprint engine uses PulseWire’s official native price-level data where available.
An important part of the project was to place these different data sources inside a common mathematical framework. PulseWire’s native Footprint presents its price-level structure directly as footprint rows, while this indicator also uses Gaussian mathematics and price geometry to construct a comparable Buy/Sell Volume Profile from the bar-level totals of all three engines. In this way, different sources can be examined through the same analytical language rather than through unrelated visual forms.
The purpose is not to claim that an approximation is equivalent to native data. It is to make the differences measurable, understandable, and comparable. For users who enjoy investigating how markets are represented—and how different methods arrive at their results—the three engines can themselves become an interesting field of study.
Ultimately, the goal is simple: to move from merely seeing volume to understanding its structure.
Release Notes
Footprint engine: row anchoring corrected.Each official footprint row spans a price interval, from its down_price to its up_price. Previous builds anchored every row to the lattice cell of its lower boundary, so with Ticks Per Row = 1 the volume traded at the live price was displayed one tick below it: while price sat at 3.67, the buy and sell numbers updated on the 3.66 row.
Rows are now anchored to their upper boundary, up_price. Volume traded at a price lands on the ladder row of that exact price, and the axis row of the table updates while price sits on it.
The Geometric and Intrabar engines were already center-anchored on the one-tick lattice and are unchanged. No volume figure was modified anywhere; only the placement of the official rows on the ladder.
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.
Measuring markets through Volume Dynamics & Geometric Frameworks.
For invite-only script access, DM on PulseWire or via x.com/sabanci_ata
For invite-only script access, DM on PulseWire or via x.com/sabanci_ata
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.
Measuring markets through Volume Dynamics & Geometric Frameworks.
For invite-only script access, DM on PulseWire or via x.com/sabanci_ata
For invite-only script access, DM on PulseWire or via x.com/sabanci_ata
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.