Yes, I'm sure HFT does care about posted size, but for me trading the ES, I can see its always far enough away from the inside bid/ask as to not get it, and it either disappears very quickly, or at least when price does get closer. The whole idea is just to push price one way or another. What I also see is simultaneous huge size on the bid and ask, thereby cancelling eachother out. This is I presume to confuse whatever algos try and make sense of if there is more interest on one side. There most certainly is. But once again, since this discussion is about stocks, and all my knowledge is about the ES/NQ, then I'm not sure how much of what I say applied. In general terms though, these days, there is no reason to post your intent to trade. If anything, what you want to do is push price into your order, and when it gets there, bam, you hit it. But whatever interesting things I see only work half the time, so its not like I've seen a holy grail in there anywhere.
Come on man, try to keep up. As long as you know it's not likely the full size, then you have a lower bound. And since you're not getting routed to the venues being quoted (because your orders are probably routed to a dark pool unless specified), that liquidity is not representative of real liquidity. Moreover, you're feed is so stale by the time you see it, it doesn't even matter. Also, if you're trying to work this info without computer assistance: keep in mind that a decent system can route about 30k orders in the time it takes you to blink. That all being said, I'm sure we have traded before. I love that retail flow. I wouldn't worry about liquidity though, I'm sure someone is willing to take down your one lots.
Magnum... wanna see some old school level II.... put in that US ticker for WEED.... TWMJF. I just noticed it. The tape works like the old days. No spoofing at all.
How are you going to compete with hft,if you don`t have money to hire programmers to write your own platform?And you use a cheap free one expecing it would trade for you on hft level.I can offer you a time machine to get you 30 y back.