The NYSE will trade right through orders posted on other exchanges. ARCA is an exchange, BTW, and anyone can route through them. Legally (if I'm not mistaken) the NYSE has to treat ARCA like any regional exchange -- in other words, it can ignore it and trade through it even though it's not supposed to. There is a guy at the NYSE who takes complaints by mail. I urge you to contact him because, if enough people do, they will have to do something. When fighting an institution, the first thing to do is create a paper trail. You may not (or you may) get a fix on a particular fill, but eventually Market Surveillance might say something like, 'hey, you guys, straighten out a little, I'm buried in complaints. ' Also, specialists who make lousy markets and are complained about are not favored highly when it comes time to pass out new listings, which they all covet. In fact, here is the Market Surveillance fellow's address (I received it via email). Use it. I think I'm going to make a form letter so all I have to do is pencil in the particulars and send it off. It works in other businesses, it ought to work here.
I think, if you look at your AT t/s, you'll see Pacific on some of those; I think you can catch Pacific via ARCA -- I think they have some kind of cozy relationship. NYSE is the 'Primary Market' so any price improvement is supposed to occur there -- in other words, if Boston is high bid, and you hit the bid, you are supposed to get the high bid -- but, as stated elsewhere, NYSE is in the habit of shirking it's responsibility as Primary Mkt. If you want more stuff on this, let me know. I've posted some articles on this.
i traded that for the first time this week .. its crazy how the market makers act.. if they want to attract liquidity they need to at least honor their quotes.. its not like the spread isnt huge anyway.. the only thing you can do is step in front of them on the offer, wait for them to come in .01 in front of you and then try to hit em.. -qwik
Every one should have there own ability to use NX. Can you imagine how many trades you would miss if, someone at your firm used NX, and you tried to use it, and kept misssing trades cause it went in as a limit order, cause only one person, can use NX in teh firm every 30 seconds. If you're firm is like this, GET OUT!!!!
From reading postings by ET user "tradeoes", I'm under the impression that if a trade-through or backing away happens, you need to address it immediately, by phone, to get a fill or adjustment. If you use their (OES) or ISI connection to execute, you would presumably call their trade desk. Not sure how else DOT orders get routed to NYSE, but they should have "trade desks" that are supposed to deal with such things.