Volume at time vs at price: 22 S&P sessions comparedE-mini S&P 500 FuturesCME_MINI_DL:ES1!AKORDERFLOW2Volume at price (the profile) tells you WHERE the market traded. Volume at time tells you WHEN, and that matters because a level built in a quiet hour carries much less weight than one built in a busy hour. Same chart, two different questions. Data: CME S&P 500 futures (ES, December contract), real exchange volume in 5-minute bars, 22 sessions from 24 September to 23 October 2026. All times UTC. Overnight = 22:00 to 13:30, cash session = 13:30 to 20:00. 1) How volume is spread over the day - The cash session is 6.5 of 23 trading hours but carried 79.0% of all volume. - The whole overnight (15.5 hours) carried 17.8%. Per hour, the cash session trades about 10 times more than the overnight. - The first cash hour alone (13:30 to 14:30) carried 17.7%, about the same as the entire night. - Busiest hours: 14:00 to 15:00 (15.0% of the day) and the last hour 19:00 to 20:00 (15.1%). Quietest trading hours: 22:00 to 24:00 and 02:00 to 05:00 (0.4% to 0.6% each). 2) What that does to overnight levels - Overnight high broken by the cash session: 11 of 22 days. Overnight low broken: 14 of 22. - At least one overnight extreme was taken out on every one of the 22 days. Both on 3. - Compare the previous cash session's high and low (built on heavy volume): high broken 9 of 21, low 13 of 21, and on 2 of 21 days neither was touched. - So an overnight high or low is a reference, not a wall. The difference to cash extremes is real but not huge in this sample, which is why I would not trade either on its own. 3) Live example: Friday 23 October - Overnight: about 358K contracts, range 7,660 to 7,714.25. - Cash: about 1.33M contracts. The first 90 minutes (13:30 to 15:00) traded about 493K, more than the whole night. - In that first hour the cash session took out the overnight low 7,660 and printed 7,648.5 at 14:25. It never got back to the overnight high. - The night had built value around 7,687 to 7,705; the cash session sold through its low within an hour because the volume that built it was thin. 4) How to use both together - Read the profile (volume at price) for the levels: POC, value area, the edges. - Then ask when each level was built. A POC or edge formed between 13:30 and 20:00 carries real participation; one formed at 03:00 can be moved by the first busy hour. - Expect the first cash hour to test at least one overnight extreme. The question is not whether it gets tested, it is whether price is accepted beyond it (closes and value building there) or rejected back inside. - On weekly charts, check that the weekly POC sits in a zone that was also traded in cash hours. This week the cash session alone carried 78.4% of ES volume. Checklist 1. Which hour built the level? 2. How much volume was behind it compared with a normal hour? 3. Has the first cash hour tested it yet? 4. After the test: acceptance (closes and new value beyond) or rejection? Levels on the chart are from the free "VWAP & Volume Profile Order Flow Map " indicator. Futures data only (no delta for ES here), small sample, rolls can shift old numbers slightly. Education only, not financial advice.