Can anyone explain this phenomenon? If I trade a relatively illiquid stock, after the order is executed, a sequence of ECNs will suddenly line up on the offer, looking something like this: INCA 15.42 3 ADFN 15.42 3 ARCA 15.42 3 BRUT 15.42 3 CINN 15.42 3 Does anyone recognize this pattern? I'm getting paranoid about my broker / clearing firm trading against my orders. Should I be, and do these firms have proprietary traders?
I don't know if the broker is trading against you but there are hotkeys on some software platforms where you can put bids and offers out on every ecn for the same amount of shares or different amounts at the same time with one key stroke. That might be what is happening. Some traders used to do that to make a stock look weak or strong.
ADFN and INCA are the same....so get rid of ADFN. Regarding what someone else just posted. I too used to have one hot key that would throw up bids and offers on 3-4 different ecn's at once. Primarily I used this for illequid stocks to make the stock seem weaker or stronger than it really was. You put up fake bids and offers like that in a liquid stock you will get smacked. And belive me you can get smacked in the illequid ones as well too.