I was trying to sell a few thousand shares of an illiquid stock today. I was on the ask and got filled for 1 share like 16 times during the day. Each time I paid 0.35 cent to IB. Really annoying. I mean who the hell buys 1 share? How do I exclude odd lot orders or set a minimum quantity per execution? Order type was smart hidden order. Thanks.
Possibly non-retail algo traders messing with retailers. They don't pay broker commissions like you do, so they could do this kind of thing to get you to lift your order. Look in to if you can do an AON (All Or Nothing) with your software, broker, exchange, and underlying. I'd imagine that you can, but idk. You could use multiple orders with reasonable lot sizes so that you can still get filled in increments.
No algo with these type of stocks , you won't be able to sell it at one shot , but break it down as above user suggested.
Playing Market Maker in non-liquid trashy stocks can be profitable but mostly frustrating and ugly because its usually smarter money moving those stocks up and down. I remember someone spending $30,000 trying to stop the carnage of his original $7k investment. Stock jumped in price and volume(Massive Pump and Dump, usually dead for months) from $.001 to $.13, he bought at $.07,$.06,$.05,$.04,$.03, $.02,$.01, $.009 down to $.0001. One day the stock got some news and finally he sold after seven months at less than $.01 for a total of $8,000.00 The ass-h constantly asked me to buy or help him promote that trash, he was stock holding over 2 million shares of toilet paper. Its like trading non-liquid options, best to stick fluid stocks unless you don't mind paying a ton of commission there is nothing you can do to get out. I watched them walk a stock from $8 to $2 with only 800 shares, once the shares sold the bid went back to $4 x $7 ask. If the original trader in the non-liquid stock had taken his $1,000 loss so much pain and suffering could have been avoided. Why did you get involved anyways, was it to make a market or did you get stuck in a pump? PS AON will only sit and won't be executed until some news happens, otherwise your AON order has no right to execute because its not posted on the LL2.