Placing bur=y orders on the bid and sell orders on the ask price - without much success. I can see trades happening in the mid. But I thought that hidden orders were not permissible with options. How are those trades happening?
You may have placed a buy order on the "then" bid, but your order not likely to be filled until it has become the market's ask.
that scenario of yours is not reflective of what I am seeing. Very illiquid market, bids and asks very rarely move if ever. Yet fills happen in the mid. that's my question - how are those trades being lifted?
i believe the mm who are fastest will fill any retail at near mid if they determine they have enough edge on the order
Don’t know about options but with stocks it’s as simple as Td or whoever to have a customer submit an order, they send it off to one of their market maker buddies, they go “hey I like that order” , give a price improvement to beat the NBBO, jump the queue and then the order gets reported at whatever price it happened. Don’t know the exact numbers but a crapload or retail orders never actually hit the exchange.
Fragmented markets from too many venues could be an issue - hard to tell without more details. Spreads are also allowed to jump ahead of protected quotes.