Tape reading for intraday traders is invaluable. For example, if you see frenzied activity with the bid getting hit hard but price does not down move much, what might be an reasonable expectation when this aggressive selling ends? Experience and judgement comes into play in determining what is meaningful, but is that not like anything else?
If you do intraday trading, put up a time and sales on ZM and PEIX, two stocks with strong relative strength, along with a chart and give it a try for a few days. Watch the ebb and flow of activity. You might conclude that you can get away with some pretty tight stops while exiting into the “Wall” that later develops at the offer or bid. Depending on your time frame, you could scalp all day or get well positioned for a daytrade and combining WVAP and maybe considering ADR, or whatever else you may find valuable. By the way, an interesting study would be to focus on the tape at key areas such as S/R, VWAP, a retracement of a WRB, etc.