I'm not sure how this would even be possible, but I thought I'd pose it anyways. I was wondering what sort of patterns might emerge if there was a way to show a chart on a stock which only incorporated activity from trading (i.e. investment activity such as buy and hold would be excluded). Is there any way to do something like this, or possibly achieve an approximation of it?
Watch volume, however volume shows all activity which includes speculators and long-term investors (why buys and holds). As I understand you want to see jut volume of the speculators and not long-term investors. I do not think it is possible. When a trader places an order it does not reveal whether he/she buys it for long-term or for short-term. Tick size analysis also will not hep as now we have hedge funds speculators who trade in big volumes. Actually, I do not understand why to bother activity of speculator. I would assume it would be logical to analyze big guys who has unlimited funds and who buy in big volume for a long-term. They create big demands either to buy or to sell and they move the price.
I was curious if any types of patterns may emerge that would be advantageous - like maybe different types of buyers/sellers have distinct patterns and when they are mixed together, it muddies the waters. Maybe not though and maybe the opposite is true since traders take action based on investors like what you mentioned.
Look at prime brokers such as credit suisse or a service such as The Arora Report. Also look at Quant sites.
Sideways action is normal long term investing on the dailies and weeklies, you know buying bottom of support or when it kicks up, triangle breakouts, trend lines. It is clearer to see investing than day trading for the average fundamentalist as don't have stops. I would think just about any chart book is what more advanced investors use to enter, whereas those who have day traded before will use five or lower minute charts for final entry once dailies set up. As far as an indicator from the exchanges, I don't believe there are any.
I guess the float analysis is based on the analysis of volume surges and separating traders into "smart money" who sell to the "dumb crouch" at the top and who buys form "dumb crouch" at the bottom. This is good but the guy is looking for speculators actions and I just do not get what useful info it could deliver... There is no way to know whether a trader is speculator or long-term investor. Only when a traders closes position you may assume who is he by the time his position was opened.