yes, many value investors consider the overall P/E of the market to be low like I said, not predicting direction, just increased participation
That's vague. Would you mind elaborating? If it's a proprietary secret you don't have to, however. Also, how does order imabalance now predict future movement? By "order imbalance" do you mean a difference in bid/ask (eg. the percentage of trades hitting the bid vs. hitting the ask)? Years ago I built a few indicators based on that data but they were never reliable to predict future movement, only to tell what was currently happening (which can change/reverse at any moment). I'd be curious to hear how you use order imbalance to predict future movement.