Did I get taken by robot?

I opened a short position on this stock. And made a buy to cover protection near open price. The trends in later proves this thought was right. But, before that, I was cleaned by a sharp price in 1 minute. My question is what happened at that moment? Did I be detected by someone and then swapped out? What I should do next time?

 

Sorry you might not like this.
Except if you are a major volume player on this stock, the spike has nothing to do with you.
No "they" were not waiting for your trades, to then try to shake you out specifically.
Someone could have been unloading at the opening high.

 

I've had this happen at market openings...never after open. This must be a very illiquid stock...I don't touch these anymore. Anyway, that SUCKS...I'd be pissed off!

 

This is why I no longer use using limit/stop orders. If you want to protect yourself, hedge and diversity. The minute you put a stop or a limit in to "protect" yourself, you invite this kind of thing in--it's like dropping your left hand after throwing a jab... you're going to catch a right hook to the chin. It's easy money for the market-makers: just spike the price with a block buy/sell and grab your money.

As for the whole "your account is too small for anyone to care about" argument, it's often not just you. If you are noticing a market trend, there's often $10M, $100M, $1B or more playing the same trend. If half of them put stop/limit orders up for protection, the bots detect his opportunity, and spike the price to make lots of commissions. It's a very simple algorithm:

Code:

const int SPIKE_TARGET = 10000;
while(1) { // endless loop; constantly check
    if (longStopTotal() > SPIKE_TARGET) {
        spikePriceDown();
    } else if (shortStopTotal() > SPIKE_TARGET)  {
        spikePriceUp();
    }
}

longStopTotal() and shortStopTotal() simply return the total value of stop/limit orders in the DOM (aka order book) below and above the bid/ask prices, respectively. In this example, it's set to $10,000, but it's whatever the market maker wants. When there's enough profit there to justify a spike, then the algo fires. In practice, it's a bit more complicated than this, but this example illustrates the core concept.

When I was getting caught like this, I was cursing at my screen so hard that I degaussed my monitor. I was so aggravated by this kind of thing that I started a whole thread on it.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/use-limit-orders.302455/page-5#post-4330998

 

That's the whole point of stoplosses -- to clear out weak, convictionless players at the worst times. That's how the market works. You don't get 'fxcked by robot' unless you volunteer for it by showing weakness. No robot can force you to make a trade at bad prices.

 

"Weak convictionless players" - that's very compassionate of you. Let's hope nothing bad happens to you in your life.

 

I thought stop losses lived with your brokers until activated, not on the exchanges?

 

"
Did I be fxcked by robot?"
sure sounds like it.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/scien...10-YEARS?_ga=1.247033537.496533874.1474469820

 

Depends on the broker, FCM and platform you use, it can remain local on your platform until executed also.

 

It'd help if posted the ticker and perhaps I can dig up a tick chart. Could've been a large buy order.