P-shape profile
Volume Profile Analysis glossary · Profile Shapes & Distributions
Definition
A Volume Profile with a heavy bulge at the top and a thin tail extending lower; typical of short covering or initiative buying in which price declined early, met aggressive buyers, and spent the remainder of the session establishing value at the higher levels while the lower tail failed to attract participation.
P-shape profile in plain English
A Volume Profile is a sideways bar chart showing how much trading happened at each price, and a 'P-shape' is when it looks like the letter P: a fat blob of activity up high with a thin, lonely tail trailing down below. The story it tells is usually that price dropped early, ran into eager buyers who slammed it back up, and then spent the rest of the day comfortably trading at those higher prices while the low prices got quickly rejected. That skinny lower tail is basically a footnote saying 'nobody wanted to trade down there' — often the fingerprint of short-sellers scrambling to buy back their bets (short covering) or fresh, aggressive buyers stepping in.
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