Okay - to all the listed traders out there... Now that you've had a chance to play around with the new hybrid: is it an improvment over the old system or not? I'm not really sure yet. I've had a couple of nasty experiences with hybrid but a couple of decent one's too... I do like the ability to sweep levels (including ecn's) via a single dot order. I also like the ability to trade more than 1099 shares electronically..... Thoughts on hybrid? -Guru
It's still too early for me to be sure, but I don't think it's an improvement. I like to focus on whichever stocks are trading actively for the day based on news. I wouldn't say it's as bad as the Nasdaq, but the increased speed of the moves is making it very difficult to effectively read the tape. I'm also having a harder time staying in my winners. I think institutions are doing a much better job of breaking up their large orders into very small ones, and there is less visible liquidity on the book. I've still been doing most of my trading on stocks that are still trading the old way, so I hope some of you have different observations.
thicker stocks are prolly better. fills have improved and that huge size at replenishment points is usally lifted, givin' u a chance to build large positions.
Yes... It's kind of counterintuitive... but in today's markets... One ** increases volume and profits ** by fragmenting orders across many price points. It does not matter if you are fragmenting 50,000 shares... Or fragmenting 1,000 shares into 3 orders of 400, 300, and 300 at different price points. Here's where Automated Systems really increase productivity... By automatically "flooding" the market with fragmented orders as required.
I too have noticed what seems to be a decrease in the amount of visible liqudity on the book for the hybrid stocks. Hopefully some of that liquidity will come back on the book once everyone adjusts to hybrid. -Guru
One of the things I dislike about hybrid is the when the specialist uses the hidden reserve order feature. Shows 1000 shares and then fills multiple thousands. But I guess folks have been doing this on ecn's for years... Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the specialist has to show at least 1000 shares in order to use that hidden feature? Not sure about floor brokers though? -Guru