Why are so few people using darkpools or paying attention to them?

Im fairly new trader, less then a year, but am constantly surprised by how many people do the same thing, use the same strats or indicators, and fail.

This is not some sort of mystery box, unsolvable puzzle. Literally all the data is present, all the puzzle pieces are their, you just need to assemble them. These type of data points are far more powerful then any lines we can draw on a chart. If you spent more time looking at boring numbers instead of pretty lines, youd prob be much further ahead then your average trader.

One thing i found to be quite interesting, and have focused alot of my attention on, is darkpool's or ats exchanges. Not many people know about these, often ignored and overlook. Realized that they are very important signals. They are trades just like any other, but off exchange, with skewed or hidden fill details, sometimes also delayed. The entire point of darkpools is to hide or mitigate price discovery. Generally in my experience, when someone tries to hide something, its for a good reason.

These trades still get published to the SIP, just like all other trades. Need to find and filter them, and see what people are buying and when. I created a tool to track these trades over time, with an open source visualization software called Grafana. Now i can see how these trades are affecting the market, and the underlying stock. You can view the dashboard and see some examples of what im talking about. Its not public, so you would have to reach out if you want info.

What i realized is that alot of things drive people to buy and sell. However, unless people are actually buying and selling, then all that other stuff is just a distraction or guessing game. In the end, buying/selling will always be the sole driver of price, simple supply and demand. You can see what funds, makers, and smart money is buying/selling, on the exact day they do it. Seems logical to pay attention? You should look into darkpools, or do some more research on them if you have not already. More then 50% of market volume lies on the darkpool. Citadel is also using their own darkpools and many of then other to fill hft trades and hedge option contracts. SO much noise on the lot exchange volume.