Hi: I feel like I've read that there are ways to buy and sell stocks directly from other investors with a market maker. Is that possible--and if so can you direct me to such websites? thanks. Marshall G
why do you care who you buy/sell from? you just place a limit order for what you want and if someone else is willing to trade at that limit you're done
It potentially allows me/one to buy and sell to myself in different accts to find the median of a wide bid-ask spread. A market maker will typically prevent that.
sorry, not sure what is meant by "!". Also, apologies, I meant to put this in the "Stock" forum. Though I suppose applies to options too. Meanwhile, I expected this to be an easy one, as I thought I'd read something about such direct buy-sell websites, but Google search didn't turn up anything obvious and perhaps I've stumped ET's astute users/
you can do that now. put in a buy limit and then put in a sell limit at that price. But you could just put in a buy and keep incrementing it until it gets filled.
I found that wasn't true when there was a big spread. As soon as the specialist thought it was at a good price, they grabbed it--even though I had a buy order in for that price.
If you are talking about forex bucket shops that acts as a buyer and seller for all your orders then you can get a real brokers that offers access to an ECN where you can place your orders against the market. If you are talking about stocks on Nasdaq, NYSE and the like then what you are looking for does not exist. The listed market is the most efficient place you will find. As was said before, you can post limit orders and some other market participants can trade on them. Problem is that you start at the end of the queue and by the time you get fill it will mostly be because the market is going against you. For options, a lot of the bid/offer size will be by market makers. They show you a price that is almost always an advantage to them. This is how they get rewarded for providing liquidity. I read somewhere that if you place an order at the mid it is often not enough to get filled. Rule of thumb seemed to be to place a limit that makes you pay 2/3 of the spread. What I do is if I have to get out of a trade for taking a loss or take profit then I pay the spread, Otherwise I try to get the mid or 2/3.
thanks total keops. I guess I just imagined what I was thinking. I thought I read somewhere/s [<as in more than once], that the internet was revolutionizing and threatening exchanges so buyers and sellers could buy and sell directly and there was some websites doing just that, but maybe I just imagined it. [and yes, that sounds about right for my experience--going half way typically isn't enough to get filled]