Hidden Forces: Decoding Buyer & Seller Activity on Charts

Total Volume vs. Volume Delta: The total volume on the chart includes both buys and sells, making it less useful for analysis. Volume Delta, however, shows whether buyers or sellers dominated within a candle.
A green Delta candle means more aggressive retail buying; a red one means more retail selling. This helps analyze market sentiment beyond price movement.


Price & Delta Relationships:
1. Price and Delta move together → Organic movement, likely driven by retail.
2. Delta moves, but price doesn’t → Retail is heavily biased in one direction, absorbing limit orders. Possible smart money trap.
3. Price moves, but Delta doesn’t → Retail didn’t participate in the move. Lack of belief or failed market-making attempt.
4. Price moves against Delta → Strong indication of market manipulation. Large players using aggressive strategies against retail.


Market Manipulation & Smart Money:
* Whales leverage retail psychology and order flow to position themselves.
* Retail often gets caught in fake moves, unknowingly providing liquidity to big players.

Final Thought: By analyzing Delta and price movement together, we can spot hidden large buyers and sellers and understand market dynamics beyond surface-level price action.