Is there any benefit in watching this? Bids and offers come and go, size disappears. I'm beginning to think time and sales all one needs. Would appreciate any views other might have on this.
Time and Sales is useful but doesn't show depth of the market. NYSE OpenBook and Level 2 do this. You need to integrate all of them to gauge buying and selling interest.
Level 2 and any market guage can be deceptive IMHO in that if I want to do size in a stock, the platform I use allows me to hide what I'm doing. For example, I want to buy or sell 5000 shares, my platform allows me to simply refresh my bid or offer until I am done. Level 2 never sees it, but time and sales tells it. And if I can do that, I would imagine the big traders can certainly do the same. And as for so called big houses, who cares, the trades only show up on my time and sales while level2 is filled with traders appearing and disappearing so much, my head spins.