Ok, that's starting to make more sense to me.
there's basically a balance between supply and demand that affects the market price, so when it skews heavily towards one way it becomes unbalanced, causing the price to shoot upwards.
Tell me if this analogy holds up.
Supply and demand are like two sides on a set of scales. If demand is heavier than supply then price goes up. If demand is lighter than supply then price goes down. And if each side is really out of balance it swings up or down by a large amount.
So in the case of high volume (weight) and unbalanced supply/demand, it swings by a large amount and at a rapid speed, but with low volume it moves slowly.
Am I getting close..?
price requires supply to ascend if you agree that price is value, when there is no supply traders on the bid will reason that if they chase weak supply then they'll get stranded when they want to get out so stalemate occurs as bidders have a value level they wont go past
so that raises the obvious question : at what point does volume go from being thin to being extreme or 'heavy' ?
this is a relative exercise, relative to yesterdays volume, time of the day, time of year, the value zone youre in, which maybe determined by how much that price zone was transacted in the past, who's comming to do business, is there news pending that stops traders from committing with pending orders
the context of the volume may play a much larger role than merely the amount of volume, for example, in a strong constructive uptrend offers remain thin because they know that can get a better sell price that's true but that doesnt mean a lot of volume will chase as pro traders look to enter on a pullback ...that scenario is vastly different to a larger consolidation zone where different ideas of value changed overnight .....getting context and relativity in the trade can make a large difference to how you define your risk of entry ......not all sellers are exiting a long and not all sellers are selling to short, not all bidders are opening a position and not all bidders are closing a short.....
you cannot say at any one time that one group is dominant due to the two phases and the size of those phases (chop or trend) what you can do is observe when one group demand is higher by their volume allowing for fake stacking, you can observe when suddenly, relatively/comparatively, a group of sellers want to just get out or a group of buyers relatively/comparatively just have to get in, which requires you to decide on the context, however you make up that context, there is a story to the play, not just "more" volume, what made that volume show up is not always important, sure, but, if you can give the unfolding game a criteria that makes sense to you based on previous observations then you are getting closer to knowing when to take action (entry and exit)
so you see, more sell volume does not always translate to lower prices, it may merely mean price cannot ascend due to a single player offloading and once that player has done their business then price may ascend, so you must decide exactly what the term balance is.......balance is always relative as it changes over time from seconds to days even out to calendar quarters and then you need to think of the context of that volume.....
i say, i think the only hard and fast rule about balance is that you, yourself, must first have the balance of not assuming only one game is so, that the markets are always in balance, there is only one spread* , for the players who are transacting at the time that you are transacting
*this still applies to a widening spread
my 2c