Single Prints in Market Profile: Definition, Setups, and Trend Day Reading

Market Profile organizes a session by time and price rather than by candles. Built by Peter Steidlmayer at the CBOT, it groups every 30-minute period into a letter — A, B, C, and so on — and stacks those letters at the prices traded during each period. The result is a horizontal distribution showing where the auction spent time and where it didn't. Time-Price Opportunity (TPO) charts are the visual form: each letter is one TPO, each price level is a row, and the shape of the day tells you whether the market was balancing, rotating, or trending. Market Profile is closely related to the volume profile, but it tracks time spent at price, not volume traded — a distinction that matters once we get into single prints.

What is a TPO Chart?

A market profile (TPO) chart uses letter sequences to represent each 30-minute period of the session. The RTH open starts with "A," then 30 minutes later it moves to "B," and so on. As price trades up and down, each letter gets stamped at every price visited during its window. Stack the letters and you get a market profile shape — usually a bell curve when the day is balanced, stretched and one-sided when the day is trending.

Two ideas come out of that structure: where the market spent the most time (the densest part, often the point of control), and where it spent the least time. The thin spots are where this post lives.

Single Prints: What They Tell You

A single print is a price level touched by only one TPO letter — a period with no overlap with prior periods. It tells us a lot. An auction with single prints indicates a strong push from one side of market participants. These participants are either emotional, incredibly confident, or have no choice but to act. We don't really care why or who is moving the market — we do care about how to use this information to our advantage.

Jim Dalton has said, "The worst thing a trader can do is not believe a trend day," meaning that if the market is trending, you'll get run over trying to trade against it. Many retail traders default to mean-reversion strategies — and for good reason. The market spends more time in balance than trending. But focusing only on mean reversion means you'll get steamrolled on trend days, or miss them entirely because you have no plan for when the market trends.

Single prints are a clue that the market is trying to trend. They form on the market profile when aggressive participants push price in one direction fast enough that no one re-trades the levels behind them.

The Data: 717 NQ Sessions

To stress-test the rule, I logged single prints across 717 NQ trading days between April 2021 and January 2024 (yes, I went through each day and logged the details).

52% had single prints

Out of the past 717 trading days, 376 had single prints — meaning 52% of days showed the market trying to trend. That's roughly 2.5 sessions a week where the auction printed a one-sided push.

Trend held 72% of the time

Of those 376 days, the trend held 274 times — 72% of the time, the market held in the direction of the single prints, meaning they weren't traded through and we closed in that direction. A strong argument against fighting a trend day.

SP failures continued the trend 43% of the time

Of the 376 days with single prints, 102 days had SP failures, meaning the prints didn't hold. That's 27% of SP days. Even on those failed days, the original trend continued by the end of the session 43 times. In other words: a trend started, failed, and then resumed in the original direction.

Full reversal: only 15%

There were 59 days where the trend completely reversed — the market tried to trend, failed, and then traded the entire day's range, closing in the opposite direction. That's just 15% (59 out of 376 days). If you're going to fade a trend move, understand that you'll be punished most of the time. This isn't putting the odds in your favor.

How to Use This Data

In my own trading rules, I don't fight a day with single prints. You can take it further and use the data to exploit these moves by building an approach that takes advantage of a strong market profile auction instead of resisting it.

When you see single prints forming, sit on your hands instead of looking for a fade. Once that discipline is locked in, build a framework for participating with the trend. A few starting points:

• Wait for a minor pullback into the most recent acceptance area for continuation.
• Stack entries at liquidity zones in the direction of the prints.
• Use a simple retest of a support/resistance flip as your trigger.

Single prints don't mean you should immediately go long or short. They mean the market profile auction is one-sided, and your strategy should reflect that.

Pairing Market Profile with the Volume Profile

Market Profile shows where time was spent. The volume profile shows where contracts changed hands. They overlap, but they don't always agree, and the disagreement is where edge lives. A single-print run on the market profile often coincides with a thin low-volume node on the volume profile — both are telling you the auction passed through without acceptance.

The two tools also pair well for continuation reads. Volume builds in the direction of the trend confirm what the single prints are already saying, and the market profile One Time Framing concept gives you a structural read for the next session if today closed near its extremes. For the broader toolkit, see our overview of order flow trading.

Summary

The main point of this exercise was to give you enough evidence to support the rule: don't fade a day with single prints. Many traders lean toward mean reversion, but the data shows trending days with single prints are not to be fought.

The secondary point is that single prints can be used to your advantage. These days wipe out more traders than any other. Don't reflexively go long or short the moment a print forms — use this data to build a framework for capitalizing on these days.

If trend days usually cause you problems, sit back and avoid trading when you see single prints. Once that discipline is locked in, start developing strategies to participate.