Yes, volume is extremely important (although I did a wave study without volume for a period using spread (or range) as a proxy for volume instead (which it is), and it worked pretty well overall).
Thomson Reuter (metastock or equis) do provide an 'End of Day' combined data service. It is not perfect, but is quite useable, and is what I use for EOD analysis. I haven't asked them about a combined live service, but I know eSignal don't provide a live combined service (it can be done manually using excel and the eSignal Q link though).
From my experience ChiX and the ASX trade in very similar proportion, or put another way, their volumes are relative.
For instance, if the ASX is trading on very high volume, the same thing (or very similar) will be happening on the ChiX .
And if volume are very light on the ASX, the same will be happening on the ChiX.
It is quite uncommon for one to have high volume, and the other to have low volume, for instance.
At this point in time the ASX still does the majority of volume, somewhere around 70-75%
So if you do your analysis just using ASX data, you will be fine, there are very few anomalies.
There are also very few differences in the trading spread or range between the two exchanges.
Dark pools are 'off market', and you want to analyse the 'on market' trading, so dark pool matter little.
For instance, the very large stock transfers made there are not usually part of a stocks free float (the available trading stock), so it generally wouldn't be considered anyway, it would mostly be held tightly and not available for trading.
And when these large transfers are announced, they can be mostly ignored, as they did not affect the trading that day (and the decision to buy or sell, may not have even been made on that day, it was only announced (in hindsight) on that day after some previous negotiations).
When analysing price spread and the position of the close, you want to understand 'what happened on that amount of volume traded', not what happened off market, potentially a few days ago, that just happened to be announced today. See what I mean ??
The only change to that would be if a large off market transfer was made, and then was slowly sold off for some reason, and then it became free float, but that would be quite unusual, and certainly not common, but would spoil your analysis for a period no doubt......
You also need to realise that the markets are not perfect, and so your analysis will never be perfect.
Things are forever changing, either on a worldwide fundamental basis, a sector basis, a regional basis, or on an individual stock basis.
You will need to be flexible in your thinking, and be flexible in your analysis, all the time, because things change........regularly.......
For instance you might see a stock being obviously accumulated, and so after a period you join in and buy some as well, because you can obviously see what is happening and reasonably expect that when the mark up phase begins, you will be taken for a nice ride higher.
But then circumstances change (for some unexpected reason), and the accumulators choose to just dump their holdings, causing a widespread downbar, and locking all existing holder into a losing position.
In that example, you need to understand what has most likely happened - they dumped their holdings (whether you like it or not), and change your thinking (just like the former buyers/accumulators have done).
In this case, your analysis was originally correct, but circumstances changed unfortunately.........markets change.....opinions change......all you can do is analyse what the chart is saying at the time, and adjust for it on a regular basis as time goes on.
The above example may not be very common, but it does happen from time to time, more often in the small and micro cap stocks - (and so does the reverse, and price can go up unexpectedly).
