To be more specific, there are buy/sell orders which are absurdly large (10,000 BTC when most transactions < 10 BTC).  Seeing a buy order that is 10,000 BTC pretty much stops the price from dropping below the price of the buy order. But as soon as the price does hit it, the buy order disappears without completing. Does this encourage the price to drop, or is the wall created to stop the price decrease and encourage an increase? When you see a wall, what does that indicate would likely happen next (ie a buy wall means the price will likely go up since it can't go down below the wall).

 Occasionally a huge wall will appear on the buy/sell side and then disappear as the price approaches it. When a seller does this, what are they trying to accomplish (and why does it work)? When there is a buy wall is it the opposite intent?  If Casual Joe Bitcoiner sees a sell wall, what does he do to defeat it, or is it better to go with the flow and support the action the wall is trying to force?

Mt. Gox seems to be $100 higher than other exchanges. Is it common for people buy BTC at the cheaper exchange, move to the more expensive change, and then sell? What prevents this, if it was common wouldn't the exchanges be much closer in price? Does a large sell wall liek this indicate anything (either positive or negative)?

Most of the advice here says to keep the majority of your BTC in cold storage and keep a little bit in a hot wallet for daytrading. In my experience it takes almost 24 hours to move BTC from cold storage into an exchange like BTC-e (is this common?). But if btc and/or altcoins experience major price fluctuations and you want exchange your btc for altcoins/USD (or vice versa) then the 24 hour turnaround would be detrimental since after 24 hours the price could be drastically different.

So when most of the advice says to keep cold storage, are they really saying keep in cold storage and ignore daily fluctuations because there is literally nothing you can do to quickly adjust to them due to technical limitations?  Or is the common "24 hour turnaround" as stated by most exchanges just an outlier estimate and most cold to hot transfer take much less time?

Or am I getting conflicting advice from two groups of people: those who hold for long term and don't play daily changes, and those who keep their money in exchanges just so they play the fluctuations?
 

 When depositing into BTC-e how long has it take for BTC to appear in your account? Their FAQ says 24 hours is possible, and the few times I did it in the past I just checked the next day and it was there but I never tracked the actual turnaround time. I deposited this morning and have been checking every 20 minutes to see if it is in the account. With all the volatility today the difference of a few hours can mean a big change in price. If it commonly takes 24 hours in your experience then I at least can stop worrying about it and change my focus, but this "up to 24 hrs" is causing my   obsessed mode to kick in ("maybe its there now... nope", "how about now? Nope", "Now? shoot!", etc).

I bought BTC from Coinbase on the 4th and received it it yesterday (8th) without a problem.  I was worried that they would do the same thing so I preemptively sent a Support Request after buying the BTC asking them how I could avoid being tagged a high risk account. They replied saying my account looked fine and whitelisted me. Not sure if the sale would have gone through if I hadn't preemptively contacted them, but if you are worried about them canceling your order try to contact them before the final date. It couldn't hurt.

 I've read a few horror stories from Coinbase users in this area that say Coinbase uses its "High Risk" policy to cancel orders when the price increases during the pending period after purchasing. Well the price has increased quite a bit this week and I was curious if anyone has fell victim to this? I purchased early last week and it completed 1 day prior to their scheduled date, and then I purchased again this week and was told it would finish today but have yet to see the funds come through. The price has increased over $100 in the past 4 days and I'm a little paranoid that I will be getting the "High Risk" e-mail soon, despite none of my purchases being more than 2 BTC.

Basically, is the "High Risk" tactic a rare occurrence and not something to worry about, or have others had this happen to them during the price explosion of the past few weeks?

 For those of you who have been in game for a while: if you were to enter the bitcoin market today (like many of us newbies) but had the knowledge you have gained over the years, what would you do differently? What wallet(s) would you use? What exchanges? Would you be more conservative or more aggressive?

Since most 2Fa services send text messages, is it common for the primary carriers (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc) to restore access to the previous SMS account on the new phone? Or is it tied to the physical hardware?

Or put differently, if you use 2fa with your phone and you lost the phone, what would you do personally?

I've read a lot of threads and articles on various wallets and exchanges out there and almost every one has a horror story or two warning people never to use them. The most popular ones (Mt Gox, BTC-e, Coinbase, -QT wallets, etc) all have multiple threads on why you should avoid them, but the alternatives seem to be too new and untrustworthy compared to the established names. Is there so much negativity on the popular sites because so many use them that there is bound to be someone unhappy with them? Or are the newer, less established sites/wallets the better ones?

Basically, how does one find a consensus on what wallets and exchanges to use? Similarly, if you were to start all over again, what exchanges and wallets would you use?

I have 2fa set up on some websites and like the extra security. But what happens if I lose my phone? Is it possible to get the text messages elsewhere (which would be a security hole) or will I lose access to my accounts forever? Or will it be fixed once I replace the phone? I'm trying to find a balance between having enough security to prevent others from accessing the account but not so much security that I increase the chances of permanently locking myself from the account.

Much of the advice here is to not keep the majority of your bitcoins in an online wallet or exchange like Coinbase and Mt Gox. A potential problem is that (to my understanding) it takes up to 7 days to transfer coins from one system to the next. So if I have a cold wallet and I see that bitcoins are beginning to average a decline, it will take 7 days to move my bitcoins from my wallet to my exchange in order to sell them? Is this accurate? Isn't this detrimental to keeping up with the ups and downs of the price; by the time I move them from my wallet to an online exchange the price may have dropped over 15%.

If this is true, what type of workflow do you suggest to go from wallet to exchange and back to wallet in order to offset the time delay when it comes to buying and selling bitcoin at the proper low/high times? 

 I've read about the moving averages theories on when to buy and sell but was curious if a sale was guaranteed when you click the sell button.  Basically, if BTC is selling for $250 but it begins a downward trend and I choose to sell at $240, is that sale guaranteed to happen? Or am I dependent on buyers who are willing?  Is there a worry that during a decline a sell command doesn't happen at $240 (since everyone sees it declining and doesn't buy) and I am unable to actually sell the BTC until it levels out at the bottom of its decline? Is there a way to avoid this?
Does the exchange location change this answer? If I sell at Mt Gox, is it more likely to go through than if I sell in Coinbase?
Finally, is the reverse true? If there is an upward spike I can click buy, will it go through or is it possible that the sellers choose to not sell at the price and wait to see how high demand takes the price?

Thank you for your help! I'm studying the theory of buying and selling but want to make sure the reality is feasible. If I can't actually sell when the signs say so then this is much riskier than originally thought.