Hi rsi80, First question. Yes, there are many well-known active market makers trading Futures and Options and I believe they are generating significant volume on both. Second, I would say it happens quite often. KOSPI is one of the markets where foreigners are dominating and sometimes they do some crazy things such as last Nov Expiry day. Due to Deutsche's massive manipulative orders, KOSPI200 index plunged 2.79% (254.62p ¡æ 247.51p) and they gained profits of KRW44.87 billion (US$ 40.5 million) from market manipulation through the link between spot and futures (options) transaction.
As ogarbitrage mentioned, i think it is block trade. There is a block trade system which is connected to Exchange directly. Trade is done in the market after they put in their trades and it won't affect bid and ask. Hope I answered your question. cheers
Kospi 200 info, courtesy of TickQuest's Lawrence Lee. http://www.daytradingbias.com/?page_id=1020&symbol=KOSPI
A bulletin should have gone out. I'll ask for it to be resent. The long and short of it is that our data provider only gave us one days notice of a major upgrade to the number of orders the exchange can push through per second. In order to avoid delays in routing, we had to pull the depth until we can upgrade our lines. Today, things look good and we're hoping to add back future market depth tomorrow. The option market depth will follow in a few weeks as it will take that long for the telco's to double the size of our pipe.
Very tangential and minor issue: I placed a small test position in the KOSPI futures via a smaller separate IB account a while back, simply to observe how it moves. After liquidating position and the currency balance, I ended up with a negligible odd-lot virtual FX position out of the remainder. The problem is, I can't get rid of it. When trying to close the virtual position, IB informs me that I'm not allowed to open a position in KRW. It's unbelievably aggravating to have this position on my portfolio page at all times. I inserted several blank lines above it to scroll it off the screen, placed header lines above to separate it from my other positions. TWS gleefully undoes everything I try and plasters it in my view. Anyone deal with something similar? Forex and KOSPI aren't really my thing.