What do you think of trading illiquid NYSE stocks? Is it easier to read the specialist/tape? Is it worth the occasional slippage, and ocassional rapage? Is there less competition therefore more opportunity? Personally I think it's easier to watch something that prints slowly. It's easier to keep up with the stock. Does anyone have experience with daytrading more than a few hundred shares at a time on stocks under 1 million in average volume? Do you like higher priced illiquids, or lower priced ones. Do you use market orders or limit orders? I use market orders for entry, and sometimes limit orders for exit. There are also illiquids that trade smoothly, and there are those that gap from one price to the next... sometimes 10-30 cents. I like the gapping ones becomes I often get price improvement on the gap. One of the things I will look for is pace of the tape changing. Maybe the stock is gapping down... every few ticks, it gaps 10-20 cents down... then all of a sudden it will change to trading on every price level. Lastly is it possible to read into the tape of an illiquid stock the way wyckoff and livermore and keane did? Seeing what the smartmoney is doing and being able to make longer term trades based on the prints of the tape. ONe last thing, do you think time of print matters? I generally don't pay attention to time of print or how fast/slow the stock moves. I'm sure there's a niche group of traders who like to play these illiquids and might be able to glean some info on the questions I have asked. Maybe this can become an intelligent discussion. If you don't like illiquids thats fine, but please explain why you think the edge lies elsewhere. One more thing, I always send my orders to the specialist whether it's a market or a limit. Seems like the illiquid stocks only trade via ecn's when it's outside the market.
So it seems that although there are people who trade this style, they want to keep it a secret, and thus no replies or indepth discussion on the topic. Or people are just dissinterested in it. Well... for futures traders who never gave it a shot, I feel theres a definitive edge. I've tried futures before, and it is nearly impossible to have an edge. The more competitive a market, the less edge. Some of these listed stocks have very few daytraders following them. So it's easy to spot the money flow and the specialist bias. It's easy to take between 10 and 30 cents because theres no competition. I usually give a stock a 20 cent stop because when it is this thin, the specialist knows when I buy. He will do a little shake, maybe 10 cents. But then it rips up.
Usually the computer is trading the illiquid stocks. At our group, the top guy made 1000 bucks on a 5000 market short. He went a full 5000 shares and pretty much manipulated the stock 40 cents down. The edge is that a few traders can manipulate the price. But if smth goes wrong u can get squeezed for 50 cents and not even cause the specialist is screwing you. If there is no stock 10 cents up, there is no stock.