Where have you been in the last couple of years? RegNMS took NYSE edge? You are kidding me... Your dream is your problem, fragmented order flow is the reality, and without RegNMS the picture was way worse for poor investors. I'm sorry, but I still don't see any single point from your posts... BTW: I've been tape reading and trade NYSE listed stocks exclusively, and very much familiar with NYSE rules and specialist role in the order flow.
You're asking me where I have been the last couple of years when you can look up my posts which talked about the transition YEARS ago, while you were still figuring out what a bid & offer were. If you do not see the scam in reg NMS, then you are hopeless. The reason tape readers made money with NYSE is because we understood the scam and tried to get on the right side. Now that scam has been split up among the top tier brokers and fragmented away so the daytraders can't recreate the old NYSE strategy. Yet the end result for the small time investor/retail trader is the same, prints & prices occur that most can never get the fill on. And it's actually legitimized vs. being able to call NYSE and ask for a correction (rarely effective, but still) Hmm, isn't that the situation described by the thread starter. It's a game of connect the dots, I suggest you try the child version sometime. The events over the past 7 years paint a pattern of who really benefits with Reg NMS at whose expense. To put it bluntly, it's a scam, an esoteric edge for a few select.
You keep bitching about not being able to read the NYSE tape because of RegNMS. It's not RegNMS, but market structure evolution killed the old good NYSE so it became electronic. I loved to be on the specialist side when was aggressive buyer/seller order and I saw the flow. But even with NYSE Hybrid you can read the tape and see specialist prints and prints from floor brokers, so tare reading edge wasn't lost. Adapt or die. BTW, thanks for "kind" words. Very professional...
So a "non-ISO" order wouldn't execute book depth automatically? I thought that you had to specifically place an ISO order to not execute book depth. I thought that was the point of it.
Non-ISO order may sweep the book, but it's getting little more complicated because of RegNMS - you may grab liquidity from other market centers (but pay routing fee & additional execution time). I really depends on the order size and total liquidity available in all 11 market centers if they are "fast". Take a quick look at: http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/hm_booklet_Cp_4.pdf