OP, As with all things â the choice is clearly yours to decide how beneficial something is â or not RN
Look up Joe Saluzzi, he has lots to say about volume in the equity Markets today. Specifically he'll explain how High Frequency Trading generates synthetic volume, not what historically you would have used in the past to detect a valid movement. If you're looking at small caps, you'll find there is now volume whatsoever, gone long gone... Large caps have volume, but as I said above, Saluzzi would say its much more a false indicator than historically.
I'll wager both spyder and the original poster can not come up with good statistically significant (95%+) quantitative data across many markets proving that volume matters nor volume does not matter, as far as price direction is concerned. As far as the only thing out of this thread that rings true without even needing to check, is that volatility changes and high volume are almost always coincident -- up and downside moves. Still that doesn't tell you much where price is going, nor where volatility is going. end of story. And same goes with all the other indicators: hammers, macd convergences, etc... Unless you are cherry picking examples, not much to prove.
This may elude you but here goes. Price moves in three directions. 1. Observe an instrument where volume continues to decline. 2, Observe what happens when volume comes out of the duldrums achieved in the first observation. For observation 1, price usually moves laterally or has a slight four o'clock drift. this is one of the three directions of price. The other two directions that price takes are on increasing volume. One direction is long the other is short. You can use the attached and a simple datatest to prove to yourself how the natural cycle works where volume leads price in the cycle. The relative frequency of volume to pirce is 2 to 1. The reliability of the attached is it works long 7 out of 8 times and the same is true for working short. Money velocities on short are higher however by the ratio of 3 cubed to 2 cubed. The results of using this approach as an ATS are 11.1% average gain over 6 to 8 days average hold for quality equities as determined by high EPS and RS percentiles. This is taking 50% of the price move. Capital is doubled every 50 to 70 business days and the win ratio is 7 out of 8 and the sharpe ratio is 60 according the Worden testing on just the NAZ 100 instead of qualty stocks as suggested. If crossover trading is done using selected brief half cycles then the annual compounding approaches 100 turns per yesr. The high velocity stocks approach 3 day holds and gains of 30 %. For all of the above, volume (increasing) out of Dry Up is the leading indicator of price. 400,000 runs were used to verify the shape of the graphic at the bottom of the one pager.