Hi Zen.
The first link you posted is the typical affiliate link website. They write whatever they find around with little or no knowledge about forex. Usually, most transpose from regulated or stock market. The second link is also a "selling" website, But at least about VSA that is a very valid theory and/or software that may work great for markets where the volume in known. Obviously, attempting to sell, they imply that also works for forex with tick counts.
On the first link, from the first sentence , is understood the guy does not have a clue about forex.. I quote " For a currency to be traded and for its price to move from one level to another, volume is required" ... That is totally non-sense. . Not to mention that later He writes the study of volume started in the 1900. Of course it did.. FOR THE STOCK MARKET. In a time that Investors nor traders not even imajine the forex market as it is today.
Zen, and every body else (including the one that call me ignorant
). To be able to trade, make strategies, and/or code strategies, a person "must" understand the basics of forex mechanics. In short, what you see in your charts are "quotes". Prices that "your" Broker offers to buy or sell a currency.
Your Broker will "change" the quotes (ticks) with volume or no volume going thru them. So, your Broker could give you the average ticks count per minute that is around 60 and have zero volume... or could be same 60 ticks with a lot of volume.... now, every single Bank and Broker in the world acts the same. Like a mini CME or NYSE processing their own clients orders, generating their own tick count.
Taking in consideration the above, if your Brokers has 1 LP (liquidity Provider) the tick count will be X, if has 2 LP will tend to be 2X, ..and will increase with number of LP... because they quote you the "best" price from between them. Now, let say you are trading Via Currenex or any other platform that give you 3 quotes simultaneously, Perhaps the tick count would be less then the count your are getting in your Empty4...or if you get a "magic" data feed, where you can see hundreds of quotes from hundreds of sources... so what, still come down to the fact that no one knows if the ticks a source is emitting are just to keep up with the market or due to processing orders.
The last thing is that ALL major Banks such as DB, Citi, UBS etc, "market make" or "arbitrage" the market, whatever you want to call it. They are present in all liquidity pools. They have algors to market make or arbitrate the different pools. For example, in some millisecond, while they are trading the most volume, they do not generate a tick... why?, because "their" orders came in balanced, they cross them and was no need to raise their ask or bid to fill any un-balance.
I hope you get the idea .
J.