The regular readers of the blog must be wondering as to why am I writing about this when I myself don’t use any of it. Well the reason is, I get at least 2 to 3 emails a week asking for this, so I thought may be writing a blog post about it would help me manage my inbox better. So here it is. Please read the disclaimer before you move ahead.

There are three elements to charting , 1-Data Feed, 2-Charting Software, 3-Indicators, we will discuss all the three in this post. Lets first look at how do these charts look.

Market Profile Charts

They look like this image below

This post is only about how to get these charts and not about its interpretation. So I will stick to the intent there.

These TPO (Time Price Opportunities) or Market Profile charts do not need tick data, meaning they do not need information about volume executed at each bid and ask price point, they can work with normal price volume data, and hence its easy to implement.

Order-Flow Charts

The next thing that you are looking for is Order-flow Charts or Footprint Charts. Remember conceptually there is no relationship between both the order-flow and the Market Profile charts. You can choose to trade purely based on Market Profile or purely based on Order-flow.

The Order-flow or Footprint charts look like this - they need tick data i.e. In NinjaTrader there is an option called “Tick Replay” which need to be enabled to get these charts working.

To get the above charts working for yourself you essentially you need three things, a data feed, a charting application and some Indicators.

Data Feeds - Data feed providers take data from the exchange and provide it to you through an adapter, specifically for the charting platform that you are using. For example for Market Profile you can use either Amibroker or Ninjatrader (There are others but I do not have first hand experience with them, hence not recommending) - Amibroker is paid or licensed and NinjaTrader (NT) has both paid and a free version to use.

So you have the following options for your data feed.

1. http://viratechindia.com/ - They are the official providers of the E-Signal data feed. Expensive for retail traders. Call them for pricing.

2. https://www.truedata.in/ - They are the best in terms of quality and price for data, I use them not for market profile or order-flow, but for my own proprietary indicators. I endorse them for their value and high level of customer centricity.

3. https://globaldatafeeds.in - They are the next best option after True Data, personally I have found some issues with the quality of their price data, but that may be just me.

4. https://www.ticanalytics.com - These folks are newer compared to others, I really do not have any first hand experience with them. No harm in trying though.

Remember they all provide only L1 Data, which is data available post trade execution. They do not provide L2 is Market Depth / Order Book data.

Ok with Data feed thing, sorted, you can now move on to the next thing ie the Charting platform.

Charting Platforms - Charting platforms matter as much as the data feeds themselves, because at the end of the day the platform has to process the data that comes into it from the data feed. I will stick to the two major platforms - As stated earlier I recommend only the following two charting platforms as long as L1 data is concerned.

1. https://www.amibroker.com/ - This is a very powerful platform for both charting and back-testing. If you are keen on using Order-flow charts may be they are not the best, but for anything else, including Market Profile.

2. https://ninjatrader.com - This is a very powerful platform in terms of its ability to process tick data. If you are looking at Order-flow charts this is your best option.

3. https://www.linnsoft.com/ - Investor RT as they are called is another high quality platform in terms of its ability to process tick data and also to back-test. May turn out to be expensive compared to the other two options. They have their own Indicators for Market Profile and Order-flow which you would have to buy separately. This works with E-Signal for sure, don’t know about other data feed providers.

Date feed. Charting platform done, now we need the indicators.

Indicator Providers - There are several indicator providers for both Market Profile and Order-flow Charts you would essentially buy them to use it on your charting platform.

1. http://fin-alg.com/products.html - These folks have some of the best order-flow and Market Profile indicators. Only for NT.

2. http://www.ranchodinero.com/ - This is your next option, but a lot of traders I know have not liked their Order-flow Indicators. Market Profile indicators yes.

3. https://www.belltpo.com/ - We have an Indian vendor as well. They too have almost all the features of what others offer. I do not have first hand experience with them.

4. There used to be another vendor by the name Market Delta wo were the pioneers here, but guess what they have filed for bankruptcy.

Remember its recommended that you have at least a 2k resolution monitor or more, 4k is always better to view the orderflow charts well. Also do remember that it takes some time to getting used to, you would have to play around with the settings to get to see what you want to see.

Lastly there are also players like Vtrender in India who offer a live broadcast (Screen Share) of these charts based on their own proprietary settings, they use Investor RT and Esignal (I guess so), I am not sure you can directly contact them. You do not get to play with the time frames or the settings. Nor can you choose the instruments that you want to chart.

Hope this post answers your questions about Order-flow and Market Profile charting.

If you have any further questions fee free to write to me or comment below.

All the best with your Trading!