I have been watching the trade feed from MtGox for currencies other than USD, and have noticed very different behaviour for traders using USD compared to other currencies. While the USD traders keep selling, often large amounts in bulk, traders keep buying in other currencies. GBP, EUR and AUD are especially active. The prices in GBP, EUR and AUD are almost constantly 2.5% higher, which is where the currency's bid meets USD ask. (Asks are matched from the USD order book, and exchanged at a 2.5% fee. This is shown as mixed currency in the feed.) Large USD sales are often satisfied from bids from the other currencies, and followed by large buys in other currencies. Recently, when the price hit 13.9 USD, the buying from 13.5 and up was mostly done in non-USD currencies. Same thing happened when a 10k sale for USD, followed by other large sales in USD, made the price drop below 13 USD. Large AUD buys pushed the price back up to 13.3 USD. The last week 18716 BTC was bought in AUD, 10359 BTC bought in GBP and 6767 BTC bought in EUR from the USD order book at a 2.5% fee. Mostly triggered by bids in those currencies, but also by market sales in USD. There were no matches in the other direction (where an order from another currency was matched against the bid side of the USD order book).
Is this significant? Why are the USD users so very pessimistic, while the users of other currencies are so very optimistic? Is it just dumb users buying BTC in other currencies, while the USD market is speculators selling? I assume most serious investors would do a currency exchange in their own bank when transferring to get a better rate than the 2.5% MtGox offers.
You seem to be approaching the analysis with the assumption that the motivation for trade is buyiing/selling bitcoins.
It may make sense if you consider that the large trades are for users who want to change from one fiat currency to another, and they are using bitcoin/MtGox as the vehicle for doing that (for various reasons). I.e. what you are describing might be simply the market moving money out of euros/aud/gbp and into/repatriating usd?