The mechanism for the rising price is a mismatch in the bid/ask, right? So lower asks go unfilled? I’m not a trader obviously.
Discussion
No, offers to trade do not set the price.
It’s a limit order book.
There is a stack of bids v’s a stack of asks, these are limit orders that seek an improvement price for being patient.
Then there are market orders buys, sells which pay a premium for immediacy.
You can have an imbalance of bids v’s asks or an imbalance of buys v’s sells, both types of imbalance will move the price after a period of time.
Thanks, I once tried to do this on an exchange and realized I was going to get my lunch eaten before I even knew what kind of sandwich it was.
Years ago I wrote some trading software and I just compared the bid v’s ask liquidity whilst also measuring the arrival rate of both buy and sell market orders.
It was quite easy to reliably make money outside of the big fast markets.