just a wild guess: could that be... I cancelled my buy order b/c I can/hope to buy it at a lower price? if you're good... you start flashing 5k bids... you'll drive me to pay up on my buy order. but then of course, some other guy wants to sell 50k and saw your 5k bids as a very attractive place to start to unload his 50k... its an endless game...
LOL.. Lilboy, I know it wasn't you because if it was, I would have NXed you to death. Everytime I wanna hit that flashing size, it disappears and I think only the specialist has the luxury to do that. He shows the size, price moves up by a couple of pennies and its gone. Then it comes back in and price moves a little bit more and then its gone. This keeps happening until a pro realizes that this is a fake order and he/she puts in a huge REAL size against the flasher and the stock tanks....
No its not manipulation. Unless your trading with some chop shop that has you chasing around like a retard looking for market shorts or scalping for 5-10 cents then this should'nt effect your trading.
Is there any advantage in finding opportunities to trade at these moments when the market is crossed? I understand it sucks to be in a trade during these situations but is there a benefit to knowing a stock is crossed and something is about to happen? I see alerts like this and it makes me wonder if its used to an advantage or a way of trading for some: http://www.trade-ideas.com/SingleAlertType/MC/Market_crossed.html