Not quite, no. You're thinking too much, and this particular thread requires as little thinking as possible without becoming entirely mechanical. You're approaching the murk of "what it all means", and that would more likely be appropriate to the Wyckoff Forum at TL.
But I've learned that knowing what it all means, or at least talking around and through the subject, while it may make for impressive posts on message boards, counts for bupkus when it comes time to enter a trade and make money. Just look at all the threads on all these trading websites. Lots of "cracker barrel" trading, but are any of these people really living off their trading profits?
I do believe, however, that understanding the basics is a plus if for no other reason than it helps make trading interesting, if not fun. Otherwise why do it? It's a dreary occupation otherwise, though in any case it beats working for somebody else. So . . .
Though we talk about "price" and "price behavior", price is not an entity. You can't go out and buy one and bring it home and dress it up and play with it. Price is nothing more than the result of a transaction, and when we talk about "price", it helps to remember that.
Price action "tops" not because supply overwhelms demand but because buyers are no longer willing to pay what sellers are asking. Sellers then lower their prices in order to entice buyers to buy. How much they lower their prices depends on how much they have to get rid of and how much they want to get rid of it. And when these prices come down, those who just bought may begin to suspect that they've been had, some of them to the point where they will sell what they just bought. And who buys? Just read these threads. There are plenty of people who think that the market is going ever-higher, who buy every dip, who encourage others to buy so that they can get rid of the dogs they are currently holding. And there are people buying all the way down, all the way to the bottom. If there weren't, there wouldn't be any transactions. No transactions, no activity. And there's always activity, unless and until something is delisted.
So "failures", for example, are not just a failure of price to hold above a certain level (if we're talking about an uptrend). They are failures of sellers to find buyers and having to drop their prices rapidly in order to complete transactions.
None of which is particularly relevant to this thread. If price for example breaks a demand line, you short the first retracement. You don't get all dreamy about why and about who's doing what to whom. Do that and you miss the entry. Contemplate the metaphysics after your session is over. Doing so may at some point enable you to hold on to a trade through minor retracements and hesitations rather than freak every time it moves against you a tick or two. But that comes later. Right now just focus on (a) what price is doing and (b) what if anything you intend to do about it.
