You're so right; everyone can't buy or sell at the same time! I never thought of it that way; one of the few occupations that you are relying on a massive amount of competitors to perform their work in a manner that you believe to be ineffective or just plain wrong.
It may be useful to see volume as $$ and not just activity. Therefore, if yu wish to know the $$ involved at any price point and can can find a useful correlation and interpretation then you may wish to incorporate it. Likewise, time interval in any movement from point “A”price point to point “B” price point says something too. These, both, are market dynamics as opposed to just a static graphical “after the fact” chart that is representative of price range (open, low, high, close) over X time period. In other words, they have something to say about “how” that static bar was formed. Slow..fast..big..small..activity ($$) aka as volume...where price lingered the most during to formation of the bar....in short DYNAMICS. Price can go up on declining volume. It can go down on declining volume. Price can move slow or fast. It can go down on increasing volume. It can go up on increasing volume. What price does, correlated with volume, says something about the institutions moving price. I know most retail traders would not agree but we as retail traders are irrelevalent to price movement. Our potatoe chip money does not move the market, in general. The bullish and bearish playout we see every day on our 5 minute..15 minute..1 minute (ROLMAO) is ridiculous to institutions. They are not sitting around looking at a 3 minute chart. They have a large order to fill and they are going to move the market to better support their interest as they are filling the order. INSTITUTIONS move the markets. You or I don’t. It is not going to go down 1 point or up one point unless an institution wants it to do so. The good thing for us potatoe chip traders is that “they” cannot hide what they are doing. That is why we look at 1 min..5 min..15min..30min.. charts as we are trying to “see” what they are doing. Basically, you can dispense with the “herd mentality” or “sheep” mentality. Forget the potatoe chip traders. They are irrelevant to price movement. The market is an auction with big players wanting to fill orders. These big players push against each other until one side wins. For a while. Then the other side wins for a while. On every bar drawn you are viewing the pressures that bearish and bullish institutions are exerting for their own benefit. They win and they sometimes lose ..just like us pip squeak traders. I know what I am saying may damage our egos but basically you and I are just a drop in a bathtub of water. We are not the faucet nor the drain. No water gets turned on and no plug gets pulled unless an institution wants to do it. So......just try to figure out what they are doing by the footprints they leave in the sand. If price action, time interval, volume dynamics can help you then use them. PS I can’t believe the “brit” AKA as TDMA allowed a supposedly uneducated trader cause him to leave in a huff. LOL...............maybe he will return with a new offer??? Bye PPSS why do we see a small pull back trend made on small range bars trend up from the open to the close the whole session on not so much volume. Think about it. Why would an institution or institutions create such a senario?
Price going up or down does depend on volume. What we have to realize is that all volume is not the same; is it selling volume, buyer volume, the squeeze or one of the many other dynamics that control the movement of the instrument? I believe the institutions' create the scenario that you described, so that they can accumulate shares, while controlling price, which would rise with an influx of retail traders, attracted to the volume and the rise in price, that would be created by volume spikes. I will call it the Institutional Drip.
It could be said that volume can depend on price going up or down. In such a case no transaction will take place until a seller backs off or a buyer backs off. Of course a seller can always hit the bid without a buyer backing off and a buyer can hit the offer without a seller backing off but sometimes price stalls and moves not unless one or the other backs off.
Not quite following. The market moves when someone crosses the spread with a market order. My perception is that you are saying the opposite with the above.
Or by choosing not to submit orders -- *running*from* the other side of the market. (As when, in a market tumble-down, "can't catch a bid" becomes the term de'jure.) I love when the idiots proclaim one side of the market "took control" -- and drove the market against their own orders... As in, "Bulls were in control, today -- sending the market higher....." No, the bulls were *out*of* control, and could not keep their [wallets] in their pants, and "Buy! Buy! BUYYYY!" was the cry. And rather than pick stuff up for a dollar, they paid instead $1.05 -- $1.15 -- $1.19............ And in the other direction, the bears (in that climbing market) were TOTALLY in control, hanging back, saying "Come to meeeeee... COME to mee-eeeeee" as they took their orders higher and higher.... THAT is control. Masochist said, "Hurt me! Hurt me!" Sadist said, "Noooo-ooooooooo." {In catching up, reading things over, I think volpri said this, too....above}
I respect your pov. To continue with the logic you've outlined above. If on an up day, then seller's whom initiated a position at yesterday's high is in control of today's price action as it makes a new high going against their prior position. To continue, each seller who initiates a new position during the current day to accept a buyer's market order at $1.05 -- $1.15 -- is in control as the price moves to stop them (seller) out or they hold as their position further deteriorates. The logic you've presented makes sense for someone on the sidelines waiting to enter with a pre-determined bias. Another way to look at it as price makes new highs is that the market orders are coming from either new bull positions being opened, old bull positions taking profits or old bear positions being stopped out for a loss. If a standing limit is canceled, the market will not move that way without a market order crossing the spread. So as there are more bulls wanting to get in on price as it advances, the logic you've presented is saying the bears are in control by not crossing the spread, evaporating their standing limit's, thereby causing bulls to pay against their own best interest with advancing price. It's always in a bull's best interest for price to advance. But preferably after they've entered. Sell a perceived top early intraday on a trending bull day, see how that 'control' feels. Same with buying a perceived bottom early intraday on a trending bear day. If the above are example's of what I hear you describe as control, then I disagree. Perhaps where we might be misunderstanding each other is my statement is qualified at 'turning points' which I define as two bar price pairs.
Two points: -- we're *all* "sitting on the sidelines, waiting to enter" -- right up to the point that an order crosses to hit us. And then, "Poof!" we're gone! {multiple orders, aside.... } -- by conflating buyers with "Bulls" and sellers with "Bears", we (in this thread) have confused the issue. I think, if we just substituted buyers and sellers into the appropriate spaces above, we'd all be pretty much in agreement. For example, a "Bull" buyer wants to buy low, may hang back to see if the mkt will drop a bit and give them some free breathing room -- they wait, they waitttttt, and then "Pop!" They're in. And now they are sellers! And feel increasingly bearish as the stock (for example) drifts up. They see 20 pts go by... 22.... 26! And now it's outright skepticism! 27pts is too much! I'll put my [long] exit at 28! 27.80.... 27.45..... And now that Bull has acted like a Bear, marching their order down-doobie-do-down-down........"Ding!" Supper's ready! "Exactly!" So, whether "Bull" or "Bear" is a lot less important than whether you're holding or not, and then how you're looking to exit. Howd eye dew?