Hi , I have experienced flashing inca and isl lately and would like to know if I'm hallucinating or others have had the same experience. To be more specific:Flashing bid or ask ,and seeing the price going up or down to that level. Thanks in advance to all replies.
Those are bids and offers posted by folks that just can't make up thier minds. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Could be automated apps basing their b/a on another indicator. For example, someone playing the QQQ's could be arbing and calculating the price they're willing to buy/sell and their system update it with each tick of the nasdaq e-mini. At one moment, it could be a penny (or fraction) inside the NBBO, and the next it could be a penny (or fraction) outside. That would look like "flashing", yet be totally legitimate based on their valuation of the QQQ's at that instant. Cash
people trying to flash a competitive price and then quickly cancel ... hoping you lift or hit the order behind the cancelled one ( prob theirs as well ) which would be further away from the NBBO
I doubt is an automated thing. It's too precise .It's seems more like a signal . It does not happen often at the best bid but few levels below and few seconds later it actually goes to that precise level. SethArb explaination is more like it, but I still think it might also be a signal.
Signal? Paranoid. . . . . Just pulling your chain. Lots of signals, and when you figure out what they mean, be sure to pm me.
it's definitely automated programs. You'll see it on both sides; 3000 bid on island, then later 3000 on the offer. It's just a market-maker playing a spread game, and since it usually spooks small traders, it usually works for them.