since there are a lot of nyse bashers on this board i thought i would share a positive with the specialist system. today i was enveloping PFE with a 30.01 bid. a negitive news flash hit and the stock tanked to 29.01. they filled me 29.01. 2 min later sold for 30.10.
Tell that to the guy who just bought 1000 shares at 30.01 coz he thought there would be good support at figure. specially the 30 since it is not only a round number but a factor of 10. Good trade. I wish I had my envelope program on.
You gotta love it. But if you are really into this kind of trading, you should combine it with those incredibly fast TMBR fills on those incredibly tight spreads you can get through IB. They basically give you back part of your commission by making such a tight and efficient market on all major stocks. I still don't quite know how they do it technically. I figure the order has to travel from my computer over the internet to IB then to the MM computer, back to IB and back to me. Yet it's faster than I can see (probably less than 100 ms total). I could imagine making a nice profit just routing every order to the specialist. They often give you price improvement and fill you right at the top/bottom (if your order is already sitting at the NYSE). If you don't have an order in yet, but it looks like a move is about to start, you can try to take the offer through SMART, and in like 80% of all cases you will get an instant TMBR fill. I usually enter through TMBR and exit through the NYSE.
I've had this happen a few times, typically if you bid size at the bottom of move. Honestly it doesn't seem fair to me though. On nasdaq if someone is bidding on island and I sell market I can hit that bid if I'm lucky. On NYSE it's like there's a moving goal line. The problem is the bidder was willing to buy at his limit. Why should he get the benefit of a lower price?