What a poor high means when the next session opens

A poor high is unfinished business at the top of a day. It is not a short signal. Here is how we talk about it before the following open.

Excess versus a poor high

Excess, on a market profile, is a tail of single TPOs at the extreme — a fast rejection, buying or selling that was not accepted. A poor high is the opposite kind of extreme: the session stops at a price where several letters sit, with little or no tail. The auction did not advertise a clear end. Peter Steidlmayer’s language for this is unfinished business. In the Silom classroom we keep both terms on the glossary page and we refuse to treat them as entry labels.

A poor high says: this day’s buying did not find a price where sellers clearly took over. It does not say: sell the next open.

The next open is a separate auction

On Saturday three we take a day with a poor high and then hide the next session. Each person writes what they would need to see at the next open to say the unfinished business was being addressed — for example, an open near that high and time spent there, or an open that gaps through it and begins to letter above. Then we reveal the next day. About half the time the next session never looks at the poor high at all. That is allowed. Unfinished business is a note in the margin, not a standing order.

The students who struggle here are usually the ones who want the profile to replace a signal list. We send them back to the lettering. If you can describe the high without the word ‘should,’ you are doing the work.

Volume’s version of the same idea

On Wednesday evenings we sometimes pair a poor TPO high with a volume histogram that shows almost no trade at that extreme — a low-volume ending. Time and volume can disagree: a poor high on the TPO with a volume spike is a different story than a poor high with no volume. We do not resolve every disagreement in one evening. We practice naming it.