Seriously, if you think your broker is manipulating "you" or you think your broker is doing something illegal... Its easy to fix your problem...close your account and get a new broker...end of story. Yeah, there have been cases of brokers doing something illegal but rarely via the situation you've vaguely described. I'm also shocked you trying to link such a possibility via the difference in your backtesting/paper trading results in comparison to your real money trading results of a thinly traded 5K volume stock. Seriously, did your backtesting/paper trading results take into account how thinly traded or illiquid trading a 5K volume stock really behaves ? I seriously doubt or else you've mentioned such along with specific details. Get a new broker and stop trading thinly traded stocks that can easily move strongly (down or up) whenever someone mentions its name on a yahoo message board, twitter or at the local barbershop.
I'm interesting how they do that. There are not a lot of brokers who gives such BP and commissions. I'm not sure that I willn't face with such situation at IB for example, they also use smart routing and internalizing.
Yes, by sending you fake quotes to force you into panic-selling... Of course this is done only for short periods of time, of course when it is most lucrative... When you panic and close the position then your position will be overtaken inhouse, and the new owner continues trading it in the real market... You have been ripped off of your position... Similar ripp offs: http://cheatedinvestor.com/brokerfraud/ http://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/ameritrade.html http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/binary-trading-firm-ivoryoption-ripped-5277864 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ders-ripping-off-investors-michael-lewis-says http://www.dallasnews.com/business/...tors-ripped-off-by-high-frequency-trading.ece
Guess what... Of course individually... To be on the safe side, one should have at least 2 datafeeds; one of them should be from another vendor...
Regardless, you do have an easy fix. In fact, if you're serious about trading...you should always have a back up broker. Thus, in situations like this, that backup broker can clear things up very fast into if its the brokers or if its just your imagination.
Use a more mainstream broker, if you're concerned about your broker playing weird games against you. But that's highly unlikely though. -- sounds like you're being paranoid a bit. Even if they do, it's a very tiny % of the greater picture of things.
And does anybody daytrades with 5k shares in pos at stocks like appl, fb etc? is it bad idea in general?