Why is it that sometimes you'll see a large number of shares on the bid or ask, say 10,000 x 5,000 and then all of a sudden you see an insane amount of shares that just hit the bid for like 100,000 shares but the bid doesn't change at all and the price of the stock remains the same. WTF is all that about? Sorry if this seems like a newbie question.
manipulation to steal your money, you should have learned by now that markets are geared for the rich only.
I don't trade stocks but if you see a bid of 5000 shares hit by a 100000 shares order and it doesn't move, chances are the bid was in fact bigger than what was announced. Peg limit orders can explain that I think.
I trade e-mini futures, so forgive me if I'm way off base here, but I think what you may be seeing are trades that are being matched internally within a brokerage firm, and are merely being reported for volume purposes.
they are refresh orders.. for example,lets say i want to buy 50,000 shares..if i let the other side know that they will move the offer up..so what i could do is only show 500 on arca but everytime someone hits my bid for 500 another 500 automatically refresh's until i buy the whole 50k...i can also use a hidden order using NSDQ..lets say the offer is at50 and the bid is 49.98 on NSDQ..i can put in a hidden order at 49.99(stepping in front of the guy on the bid) and put in a hidden order whick you will not see on level II.. so if a guy goes to sell the bid at 49.98 on NSDQ,he is surprised to see he was filled at 49.99..why? there was a hidden order...you can only use hidden orders on NSDQ. refresh works on all the ecn's..with a refresh you can show as little as 100 shares..thats why if i short and the bid is showing 100,i may hit the bid to see if he has more underneath that he wants to buy..if so,i may back off or wait for him to be dome...trading can be alot like poker sometimes.
Exchanges have provisions for market participants to display only a fraction of their order sizes in the limit order book ("hidden" orders). A market participant (or several) can display a fraction of his total order, with an option for auto-refresh until the entire hidden order is depleted -- this can make it look like the bid is being hit repeatedly for sizes larger than the apparent depth but with the bid not moving at all. Anonimity features like that make the usefulness of "Level II" info questionable.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/php/webhelp/Making_Trades/Create_Order_Types/iceberg.htm http://www.interactivebrokers.com/php/webhelp/Making_Trades/Create_Order_Types/hidden.htm
Are these anonimity features actually useful? Am I an idiot for putting my orders without using these features?