For short-term trading, in addition to observing the changes in open interest, trading volume, and fees to monitor market maker movements, it is actually more direct to watch real-time naked candlesticks. The more singularly dominated by a major player, the easier it is to perceive such changes.

You can find a recently active altcoin and keep an eye on it in a one-minute chart for a day, especially during periods of intense volatility, to observe the frequency of price fluctuations. You can genuinely feel which price levels are being pushed down or collected by the major player, and which are being bought and sold by retail investors. Sometimes, you can even imagine the trader on the other end of the line pressing the buy and sell buttons against you.

This feeling is difficult to abstract into a phenomenon or characteristic, but I believe that traders who frequently monitor real-time charts will more or less have this market intuition.