This "phemenon" is pretty much what I described in a post some time ago. Basically the stock moves against you immediately after you enter a position, trying to shake you out, especially on short positions. Most of the time if you do not get out, the stock will move back in your favor but will stop +/- a few pennies from your entry and be held there forever. This happens on a lot of my trades. Many times this happens even though I may have entered the position with multiple entries, Somehow they seem to know exactly what my average entry price is, so the previous comment about knowing your position from your broker makes me wonder. I only trade stocks > $35 and > 1M daily volume, so these are not illiquid. Maybe I am just paranoid. Echo
ya, same here price cant get trough my entry and gravitate there for what seems like an etrernity, but i think this is just a psychological factor that infact determines our entries at levels tough to take out in the first place...maybe. consider also that most times it aint easy to catch prices in between round numbers or levels of significance cuz of the speed of traders takin' advantage of 'em.
I don't know about the psychological factor. I have seen this happen too many times, even when my average entry price is not anywhere near any support or resistance, in fact my average entry price eventually becomes the support/resistance point. I don't know how they're doing it, but they are doing it. Echo
I trade ONLY stocks with daily volume between 5,000 or 100,000... Because that's where market inefficiencies are found... And that's where you'll still find profitable bid/ask spreads. Depending on the Specialist... He may be completely apathetic about the stock... Or he was play games with you constantly. 5-10 years ago I would routinely send a 2,000 share order for this type of low volume stock... Today... a 2,000 share order is likely to be gamed by the Specialist... So it's much better to feed in a series of 500-600 share orders... at different times and price points. I also see virtually no algorithmic black box trading in these stocks... Because the pond is just too small for the big fish.
How about a name of a couple of stocks....the postings so far have been totally worthless and vague.... There is a block that you can place on your order so "they" don't know you are a "daytrader". SteveD
1. I don't think this syndrom is limited to a handful of stocks. 2. What type of order are you referring to for blocks?
Disagree totally: What makes you think the Specialist would be correspondingly short the stock? They stay pretty flat for the most part..their "corporate" bosses don't want them risking $$ when they can make money matching trades. My Specialist friends rarely, if ever, have a position over 10,000 shares. FWIW, Don
Would be interesting to know if you've got an alternative explanation. Who then is buying the stocks? Do you agree with the other observations people have been making?
Obviously every situation is going to be a bit different. I do agree with one comment ....trade more liquid stocks, which will make a big difference. Imagine yourself as being responsible for making a fair and orderly market on these illiquid stocks. Someone comes in with a big (by comparison) order and you have 1,000 shares every 30 cents in your book for sale....what would you do? I would sell 500 or so at the bid limit, then move up to where I could "match" with a booked order, and move up as needed. You would have to really chase it up to get big, long position. "They" really don't like to trade illiquid stocks any more than I do. Another point was that you can learn from how almost any stock acts to certain market conditions and order size...perhaps adapt a bit to the "winning" side. IMO, Don