I have a question about something That I found strange today, if not unethical (no accusations here). An ECN held the inside ask, apparently to fill an order at 5.62 ( time and sales)- the orders kept coming and coming and he would not uptick, he just kept refreshing his 1 size. The price flatlined for about an hour while time and sales showed me that at least 100 000 shares were being bought at the same price of 5.62, after some time it seems that he enlisted the help of a market maker and they both held the price while orders were filling. Prior to that the stock was in a nice uptrend. What took Place there ?
Reserve order. Most ECNs will allow you to set a maximum displayed size (100 in this case), regardless of how big the actual order is (~100,000) in this case. It was just someone that had a big block to uload and sold into a strong uptrend to get a decent price for it. The MM simply realized that the ECN was putting a ceiling on the price and decided to unload his order (or the order of someone he was representing) while he could for the same reason. Not illegal, just frustrating.
Hi, the symbol was LEXG ,orders came through arcx at around 1:35pm. Held 5.62 ragardless of volume, which was the reason I jumped in, only to watch a flat price for an hour.. I'll tell ya ..some days!!