Assuming the lack of displayed size you observed today is a temporary issue, why don't you like the new system?
I don't like it. It's not as transparent. For example, you used to be able to see if it was brut, isld, or SIZE refreshing at a certain level. Now it's just a single book. Seemed like everything was choppier today.
sorry for being out of the loop, as i'm not a scalper or anything of the such, but does anyone care to explain the point of bothering to see arca vs nasdaq book, etc.. making a difference? perhaps a quick explanation of the basics of operations of this would be much appreciated ...
i don't see why it matters were you route. arca will match any nasdaq quote and vice versa. the only advantage is with nasdaq being thicker you won't have to pay that 001 nasdaq fee to reroute outside the book.
how it used to be: You could see bids/offers on isld, brut, and SIZE all displayed individually. For example, you could have a brut at 10.50 showing 100 shares, an isld showing 100 at 10.50, and SIZE showing 100 at 10.50. This was useful because sometimes you could pick out a big buyer/seller using one of those to do all of their buying/selling... some hedge fund or market maker might be coming in on SIZE and moving up, and if you picked that out you could take advantage how it is now: Now, isld, brut, and SIZE all appear under the ID "NSDQ" (i think that's what is). In the example above, it would now just show NSDQ showing 300 at 10.50. this makes it impossible to identify a big buyer/seller coming in on brut/isld/SIZE
I used to get traded through on BRUT, INET and SOES...so i started putting orders out on ARCA, and noticed, i would almost never get traded through...now with NSDQ consolidating 75% of the volume on average and assuming NASDAQ will be proactive in routing out to ECN's that cross its quote, getting traded through on NASDAQ will be highly unlikely and you're right, there would be no advantage routing to ARCA or NSDQ except saving the 0.001 route-out fee..
I imagine hedge funds and MM's were/are in general sophisticated enough to mask their intentions by spreading their orders over multiple ECN's, but you're right that the new NASDAQ will make it even harder to identify those big buyers/sellers.
so reiterating: basically when you saw an order for 10k shares on one (isld or any other) and just hundreds elsewhere, you had an idea there was a big buyer, thus reason to buy and scalp a few points (since this buyer would inevitably drive the market up) ? So now you can't isolate individual buyers from the group - but does it matter? you'll still see a large net order sitting on the queue under nasdaq. how is differentiating the order as being from 1 party versus 10 parties helpful?
I would like to know following; when I place a limit order in the pre-market through the new NSDQ (inet/brut) will it participate in the opening cross? Or will I have to route through size? (at this moment most front ends still have the option to route through inet/brut/size although after sending the order the identifier becomes NSDQ) Thanks.