This guy is complaining about losing 2c on a 30000 order on a $5 stock? That's just the price of doing business.
I couldn't agree more. It's turned into meaningless numbers now. This is the ULTIMATE Houdini - The greatest trick is when you're trying to unload 10k @ bid onto a wall and 4-5 MM's disappear at once leaving you with a partial for 500 shares. I've got the T-shirt for that one too.
Were these really the best answers? Ok, why not do the POP method. You are trading size, and you are against a stupid bot. So you 1st test the waters with a limit order to see how much size is being traded. Next, you see the bots become interested and they start taking down the price since you are showing some size on the limits. Now that they are trapped, you buy hard with stronger size on limit which of course will not get filled as the bots reverse position (or you could just do this at the start if you think the bots are too stupid to reverse, so they become trapped on one side). Now that the bots are trapped, start selling your shares in small increments to get out of the position, give yourself some time if you need to be out by end of day, don't wait till the last min to do this. Now below you will see how some humans took all of the bots money, and the bot owners got so upset they sued the humans. http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=6862&mn=5678&pt=msg&mid=9773724
yeah..that's was your "guess"..they maybe trapped or not or maybe you just fucked yourself multiple times and that's exactly what they want to screw you twice(or more) on your way out.. is this is how one suppose to unload decent size order thiese days? shit..for one more time..SEC!!! i hope you read this shit....US stock markets are FBAR!!!! anyway....good luck with this approach..commissions + taking liquidity out will probably eat more than those fuckers on spread..
If Ameritrade sends your order to, say, NITE, and NITE doesn't have anyone willing to buy at your limit price, are they obligated to yield your order to some other MM who is, or can they hold onto it?
They are supposed to give you BEST EXECUTION so by SEC law the should fill your order at the best price and not hold on to it
They are supposed to supply accurate quotes but they just break the SEC LAWS and FINRA Rules and then point you to their client agreement . This is the FINRA RULE Below Finra Rule - It shall be deemed inconsistent with Rules 2010, 2020 and 5210 for a member, for itself or for any other person, to publish or circulate or to cause to be published or circulated, by any means whatsoever, any quotation for any security without having reasonable cause to believe that such quotation is a bona fide quotation, is not fictitious and is not published or circulated or caused to be published or circulated for any fraudulent, deceptive or manipulative purpose.
Thanks for some of the responses here. I know very little of the mechanics behind trade execution but here's what I'm sensing right now: 1. I doubt ameritrade will intentially display fake bids, front run their clients, or intentially show false quotes. They make enough money running a legit business to risk it all with this sort of thing. 2. I feel Proptrader's explanation is very credible. The HFT computers must have some way sniffed out my large sell order, and either pulled their bids or gotten ahead of my order. I don't use the 'smart routing' option, for as far as I can tell, this is not an option for Ameritrade. 3. Somehow I doubt the computers can simply front-run my orders unless there is some deficiency with the way I'm trading. Some people have remarked that Ameritrade isn't a direct access broker and that causes execution problems, so maybe that is what's going on here. Getting super fast quotes and order entries is one thing, and front running is another; maybe its just the optimistic part of me, but I don't believe that the high frequency guys are just out there front-running everyone. 4. I have only been using IB for a few weeks now, but so far I notice my execution seems to be much better. If there are 1k shares at the bid, it actually fills me by at least 1k, instead of what sometimes happens with Ameritrade. Granted I have a pretty limited history with this, but so far so good. This seems to support the thesis that the problem was with Ameritrade's execution.
Fact: There are more bots than humans in U.S equity markets Fact: ECN's are 'paying' you to provide liquidity, and take in some cases Think, if you were in the business to make billions - wouldn't you take advantage of speed and exploit retail information by offering incentives to transact business with you? Your orderflow is intercepted before it even hits the exchange. If your ping times are 100 ms and bots can get there in 5 ms. Guess who has the advantage? That is why you saw that size print in front of your offer. That is why you try and hit size on the bid offer at times and you only can get a little. Avoid hft. Spread it out small lots over larger sample or increase time frame, ie. 10 min. Don't jump over dollars to pick up pennies.
That options trader who got wiped out was so levered, it was scary. If the glitch didn't wipe him out some other erroneous market event would have.