That puppy hopped up and down about 20 times between $27.16 and $27.18 (inclusive). Your broker screwed up.
This is how the market makers doing their money !!!!! NITE is fucking you when you use online brokers. No buts or ifs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But his bid was at .18 which would jump him ahead of any bids at .16 due to price/time priority. I think what MBG is saying is that if the bid was down to say .16 at any point-even if the ask was up at .19-the broker should either fill his order OR post it because it would improve the NBBO (inside bid) which they are obligated to do now under current order handling rules. In the "old days" they would screw with this all the time. Say the market was bid .16 bid and offered .19 and he bids at .18. Would the passive sellers at the .19 offer match with him? No, so his order would go unfilled even though other sellers that were aggressively hitting the bid at .16 would gladly sell to him at .18. The problem was the aggressive sellers did not know about the .18 bid because the MM's would hold the order until they could guarantee making the spread in a riskless trade. With post 1996 order handling rules, once the bid went below .18, the MM must now either fill his subsequent .18 bid or display it as a new higher bid for other sellers to see. Presumably, if stock was still selling at .16 and .17, this would have resulted in a fill for his bid at .18. I think he has a legitimate issue here if what others said about the tape is true (as I did not look at it).
The part that you are missing is that it doesn't matter if the trades were by a market maker, isld, or whoever - it doesn't matter! The fact that he was willing to pay 27.18 for the stock, and the fact that someone else sold it at 27.16 means that the buyer was screwed, and whoever sold at 27.16 was screwed - because there was a willing buyer at 27.18 that NITE decided not to do anything with.
mgb, I don't want to sound rude, but all I have to do is hit some ecns below the bid to create the lower prints. Then some retail can yell and scream how they didnt get thier fill.
I agree - but he said that a lot of shares traded below his price - so thats why I say NITE screwed him. If a MM or someone wanted a lower print, they would do a few hundred - but probably no more. In any event, its a violation of the order handling rules. Besides, if NITE had an order to buy from a retail customer at 27.18, and saw prints at 27.16, he could easily pocket .02 risk free - so why didn't he even do that?
Maybe it was an "in house" deal and your broker bought someone elses shares for 24.10 (what you said your chart ticked down to) rather than yours for 27.18.
FWIW I sent an online request for verification of this alleged rule. Would prefer something in writing as opposed to a phone call. Will post the response once (if) I get it.