Nobody gave you the real answer. The rules are different in OTC land. A market maker does not have to place your order until HIS OWN account trades through your price. It's unreal, I developed great strategies with OTC garbage that looked so incredibly profitable, then I discovered that the market could trade through my price and just keep on going while my order sat there forever...
Thanks for your informative comments, Eight. I've often wondered about this. It also seems that non-agency retail brokerages love to internalize OTC orders as it's massively profitable. Occasionally, I've seen comments leak out from such brokerages' internalization groups, and it's pretty outrageous -- they seem to regard fleecing their own customers as a fundamental right. FYI, they would like to extend internalization to options, too.... There is, as you say, largely garbage on the OTC markets, and the SEC is surprisingly indifferent. It's unfortunate because a fair number of legit, foreign (to the US) stocks trade on OTC now, especially post-Sarbox. There seems to be no political motivation to clean things up, either -- maybe owing to the fact that internalizing OTC's is just so darn profitable for brokerages. I only hope that internalization doesn't spread to options, as this would be a debacle for spreads there as well.
Sorry if i am too naive, but FINRA prohibits front running: http://finra.complinet.com/en/display/display_main.html?rbid=2403&element_id=3607 Do I miss anything? Thanks.