Lot of people think the market only moves when there are transactions. Not true. In this case, bidders where less aggresive and dropped down, and sellers where aggresive and followed.
I give some explanation. It was usual market move. U put sell order and saw 5000 shares, but maret has moved already. 5000 buy order was removed or some fast guy had taken it Market can move even spy moves 5 cents In other words u are too slow and slow guys like us have to pay spread for marketmakers, hft....
where have you been for last 5 years? they are paying top dollars for collocation right AT exchange or next to it for a reason..on top of that exchanges themselves are selling their data to basically best bidder. wanna see upcoming order before anybody else? pay fee for exchange and they will be more than happy to sell you a data,that put's you first in line. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=249339 on top of that "they" have a lot of tags attached to the orders and data . they know everything about YOU even before you order can reach the exchange. read some papers about it from Themis boys http://www.scoop.it/t/hidden-financial-system/p/2319103433/interview-with-a-high-frequency-trader i can repeat this one more time-call me conspirasist or whatever,but if you look back for past decade or more-there was no single rule been accepted or even proposed by SEC that would favor retail traders over 'pros" from WS..not even one. all against us. subpenny(why not to do opposite? subpenny allowed for retail and not allowed to "pros'), PDT,NMS whatever..they want you out..so it would be easier for them to manipulate those markets..looks like everyone agree on one thing here-now it takes very few shares (or amount of money)to move the price. cause most of displayed liquidity is a fathom..not real..look at the charts for 50K shares average volume stock 10 years ago and now..same price,same amount of shares..look how different they are looks now..US markets are broken..so stock charts..even SEC themselves admitted it. it is impossible to control 80+ market centers that trade very same shares of same 5-6K of US companies..use to be 3-5 market centers,now-80+..
So how much continuous liquidity in the markets retail investors can provide? How much liquidity can be provided by single market center / market maker or specialist? How do you see markets functioning tomorrow if you remove HFT, restrict trades to one market center and one specialist per security? How the retail investor would be better off if that would happen? So when you want to sell because you are not greedy the only question is: To whom?
look..retail investor or trader not suppose to provide any liquidity anyway..in fact-right now no one have any obligation to provide you anything(see flash crash). those HFT boys do have a lot of rights but no responsibilities to anything..fair and orderly market? common.. spreads between bid and ask are use to be regulated to stay within certain range..not anymore..i can see now stocks having 10% -15% spread between bid and ask on the middle of trading day..so much for fair and orderly markets explain me why one have to place 60000 orders PER second and cancel them? what for? what about OP's example? why you posting 5000 shares on bid without ANY intention to buy anything? i see this every day. you trying to hit this bit-they withdraw it,before you can hit it.. wtf was that? whatever you call it-i call it big fucking pile of BS. if markets,exchanges,SEC are "pro people" everyone would benefit from it.. no? remove PDT restrictions. they doesn't make any sense to me...not allowing person to day trade stocks with account <25K,while one can trade futures or options on much smaller account? where the fucking logic here? what about subpenny? why big boys are allowed to cheat on front of my order and we are not? either allow it for everyone or ban it altogether. or give us such advantage. why not? this would attract many people from all over the world..cause there is will be an opportunity..for everyone...those ' big' boys and big gvt killed this land of opportunity and it's markets..you can see it yourself in action on every trading day.
Market manipulation and preventing others from having unrestricted access to market information is illegal but not enforced. This is the problem. You have valid point about PDT (pattern day trader) sub penny pricing etc. One important thing is that nobody knows what is correct number of quotes or trades per second or who is the good or bad in the markets. The strength of the markets is that they are free and slightly imperfect so new things can be done. I am retail and I do not mind penny here or there because it goes both ways. I am afraid that trying to enforce "the only right way of trading" or "the only good investors are those who hold 1 year or more" will destroy free markets. This is US. If it is not illegal then it can be done!
You guys do understand that by the time you see it on your screen, it's already an old quote, right? In the case of the OP's example of GFI, you're talking about a stock that trades around 200 shares - 2 lots - per second, on average. Which means outside market open and market close, you're looking at something with pretty low liquidity. Which in turn means it's not going to attract HFT attention (nowhere near enough volume) and that it will routinely bounce around by a few pennies without any trades executing because, well, because that it means to be a low volume stock. Why are we hunting for complex explanations? Occam applies. Being a retail screen trader, on a stock like this, if you're filled within 2 or 3 cents of the NBBO you saw when you hit "send", that's about as good as you can expect.
To clarify, I tried to hit the bid with 5000 shares showing on the bid at 13.32, i got no fill whatsoever, and not a single print went off... ie the bid just disappeared and all of a sudden it instantly went to 13.30 on the bid and 13.31 on the offer. Another thing ive noticed is that sometimes i put a bid out on an ecn that does not have any bidders... then instantly there are other bidders along side with me and they have priority over me ie there are no bids on NYSE and i bid 5000 NYSE then all of a sudden there is 20000 on the bid and prints go off and i am not getting any fills... i can only assume that when i route my bid an hft algorithm sees it and decides it wants to get priority ahead of me? and from my experience there are posted bids/offers that every time you try and hit them they disappear. i have noticed this regularly, i thought this was not allowed but it is happening over and over to me and im sure others as well.
quotes can change (ie. market can rise and drop) without any transactions occuring its just the pricing algos changing their quotes. you have to ask yourself, are all the bid/offers you are seeing 1 algo or multiple algos? how many actually understand the value of the underlying to constantly quote the inside market??