Stocklore
Technical Indicators

POC (Point of Control)

Point of Control

The price where trading stayed longest in Market Profile — seen as the center-of-gravity price where the most trading gathered that day.

In plain terms

When you stack letters with TPO, some prices get an especially long row of letters. The price of that longest row is the POC. Think of it as the price where trading stayed longest that day — the price where buyers and sellers met most.

Put simply, it is "today, the price most everyone roughly saw as fair for this stock." Picture the bulging middle of a bell-shaped distribution.

What it tells you

POC shows the price the market traded most that day as a single point. Traders see this as a kind of center of gravity and watch whether price strays from it and gets pulled back.

When several days' POCs gather in one place, that zone is sometimes read as a level the market treats as important.

Formula

POC = the price of the single row where letters stacked longest when TPO (trading time per price level) is stacked
= the price where trading stayed longest that day

What high or low means

Price above the POC is trading on the expensive side of the day's center of gravity, below it on the cheap side. So the POC is referenced like a center line price tends to return to.

But this is only a price made by that day's or that span's trading distribution. When the next day's flow changes, the POC moves too.

Caution

POC is the price where trading stayed long, not the correct price or a fair company value. Being a point made by time distribution, it is unrelated to a company's fundamentals.

POC shifts position depending on the time unit viewed (a day, a week, a month). Without fixing the period viewed, its meaning blurs.

Stocklore does not display POC on charts. Being a professional short-term trading tool, it is defined only as a reference for when you hear it on market TV or a trading platform.

Metrics to read alongside

See it in real stocks

Search US stocks on Stocklore to see POC and other financial metrics alongside the sector average.

Exactly how Stocklore computes this metric (formula, thresholds, SEC source) is on the methodology page.

This explanation is for information and reference only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Investment decisions and their consequences are your own.