I will tell you that yes, the Arca NOW order is "now" essentially worthless. You were correct in your conclusions as the NOW order was designed to enable the first three parts of the Arca algorythm to occur without the fourth. Prior to SuperSOES, the fourth part involved ARCA Snet preferencing the MM it had identified (via proprietary data) as the most likely to fill the order. The problem was the delays experienced waiting for the SNET order to be filled or rejected...while the stock was moving further away in price and many traders wanted to avoid this SNET portion of ARCA functionality. Now that any residual volume (after ECN's) is delivered to SS, and SS will deliver immediate executions (providing a MM is at the inside price), the NOW order is IMO not needed. Turok, the more I read your posts, the more it appears we have very similar styles. I wholeheartedly agree that I can "nail" liquidity faster with my own hotkeys and the overall effeciency of my platform than waiting for ARCA to find it for me. In fact, I have the ARCA functionality "turned off" in my software using ARCA as a matching ECN like ISLD. I will frequently pick off ECN volume a cent or two away from the inside, and if I do it through ARCA-with the ARCA functionality enabled-it first tries to get me liquidity at the inside which I do not want it to do....or else I would have tried that myself in the first place.
Thanks DATTrader and Vinny1 for addressing this issue. I suspected that ARCA functioned as you guys said, but I just wanted to make sure because it is not specified on the ARCA website and a lot of people use ARCA blindly without understanding how it or any other ECN works. Best of luck to both of you, Dan