The totals, officially reported as 'buys' for the day and 'sells' for the day, have nothing to do with settlement. The OTCBB activity passes through designated market makers (MMs). When they sit on the bid or the ask, they can either be representing the buy/sell intentions of a brokerage customer, or they can be trading for their own account. When they trade for their own account, and I place a 'buy' order, it's recorded in the 'buy' totals because it was a 'buy' request that initiated the transaction. So even though there was technically a buyer and a seller (in this example, I was the buyer and they were the seller), the transaction gets logged into the 'buy' totals for the day. The reason why it is useful/meaningful to know how many 'buys' there were compared to 'sells', is that it gives one a feel for the overall public demand for the security in question. When you start to see 'buy' orders flooding in, it is usually (but not always) a sign that the stock price will begin to rise (because the lower bids of the Market Makers will be eventually taken out at some point, leaving only higher bids remaining). This can change in an instant, however, because any/all market makers can change their bid/ask quantities and prices in a split second.
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