A few weeks ago I day-traded some equities instead of my usual swing trade or futures. I had a limit order absolutely perfectly positioned and price touched but didn't traded through. I should have had a few thousand shares and the trade was or would have been very profitable. I downloaded the T & S and submitted it. In my mind it wasn't a coincidence. I was using a crappy front-end from a retailer. It's funny actually to see the manipulation. Sometimes on a swing trade I'll go market in highly liquid stock or ETF with presumably minimal slippage and just get dinged. Part of the game. Hold the order til the instrument moves enough then record the transaction at the top end of the bracket. Nearly risk free fleecing. Actually this is good to see in action because you can see how why and where the money is being distributed by the industry. I suppose it is one of those things you learn from and hopefully eventually make work for you.
placing and pulling large share size is okay with me. What pisses me off is when you hit the size and the specialist lets him pull (probably because the size is the specialist lol) if my order is placed and accepted before they hit the cancel button, they should get filled PERIOD. Anything else is favoritism and immorally apprehensible.
I am sure all of these guys are prop traders on T1s though, though even we have slight delays compared to what shows up on the floor. Sometimes I am 100% sure the specialist is holding my market order while yanking fake size, sometimes I have no idea if it's a delay. Haven't seen this phenomenon myself however, though I have seen similar tricks. I am intraday swing and longer, so I don't follow the tape religiously except when I am making entries to plan risk. Anyone who relies on this flipping technique will take a big whack eventually. I'm sure certain specialists would relish the opportunity to spread the faker down.
Read the articles on Paul Rotter, the flipper, who allegedly used this strategy to make tens of millions a year in bund futures. People are now trying to employ it in stocks.
i think all you need to do is buy a seat on the NYSE. membership has its priviledges. if there is no trading floor (no specialists, all electronic) there wont floor traders. i.e.) there are no floor traders for NASDAQ as far as i know.
Quote from Steve Tvardek: You know whats fucked up though, I noticed a pattern the other day and there was about 10k of offers lined up and I knew they were gonna be pulled so before it looked like the bids would gun for the fake offers, I sent a 3K buy market order. the fucker (WHR) holds my order and lets all the "offers" get pulled so i wouldnt get filled so i had to cancel my order. Is it not possibly because it was a market order that had to be handled by the spec (which manual delay allowed the offers to get pulled), instead of a limit order, which the clerk could have possibly handled immediately? Better still, I wonder if the DOT software would hold those offers, and not give them outs, if it had incoming bids that crossed them.
My intention w/ the market order was to throw it out there so no one can see it. If I put 3k in the OB, I thought that would scare away the offers and make it easier for them to pull. I guess I can try what you mention, see if that makes a difference.