Market Profile has become a robust methodology of technical analysis trading since my friend Chuck Bloomberg traded with soybean trader and author J. Peter Steidlmayer in the CBOT Bean Pit during the late 1970's. Mr. Steidlmayer devised the Market Profile as an intra-day charting technique (price vertical, time/activity horizontal) and wrote the book, "Trading with Market Profile." 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_profile, but many more internet references to MarketProfile exist

Steidlmayer was seeking to evaluate market value as it developed in the day time frame. Steidlmayer's charts displayed a bell shape, fatter at the middle prices, with activity trailing off at the higher and lower prices. In this structure he recognized the 'Normal', gaussian distribution he had met with in college statistics, (3).  The Market Profile graphic was introduced to the public in 1985 as a part of a CBOT product, the CBOT Market Profile (CBOTMP1) (2). CBOTMP1 included the new Liquidity Data Bank (LDB) data; end-of-day clearings, identified by the class of trader in the pits ( (1) local, (2) commercial, (3) members filling for other members and (4) members filling orders for the public). The Profile was proposed as a tradingmethodology for using these new data. CBOTMP1 advertised the Profile/LDB as the way to 'Improve Performance'. It is described as "the only variable-cost ticker service in the commodities industry."

My friend, Mathew D. Reynolds created ZoneTrader™ as a predefined market arena for trading auction based markets that seeks to capture the current psychology of underlying market on multiple time frames in order to determine or predict future market direction.

ZoneTrader™ employs three distributions per profile and currently five profiles. The profiles are Yearly, Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly and Daily. Each Distribution contains the same seven predefined and specifically labeled zones. These are: (Neutral Zone, Bullish Breakout Zone, Bullish Confirmation Zone, Bullish Trend Extension Zone, Bearish Breakout Zone, Bearish Confirmation Zone and Bearish Trend Extension Zone) we use these to order, profile and interpret condition of market to provide traders a specific description of where the market is and what it is trying to do.

Suffice it to say the MarketProfile in anyone of its derived forms adds to a trader's understanding of financials.