I know this sounds dumb, but can you explain this? I want to understand what impact the options market has on stocks.
Anybody remember the stuff you had to learn for the series 7 exam? Practicing even the slightest price manipulation of securities will put you behind bars. ...then in parallel, you have the NYSE specialist system. A few lucky fellows get to not only manipulate, but <b>firmly control</b> the exact price of the stocks they're trading. When does it end? As soon as we refuse to put up with it any longer, and move all the liquidity to the ECNs.
The ECNs actually make a lot of these scumbag stocks easier to trade. Let them do what the do as long as I can get real liquidity from ECNs and the price action of the stock.
I don't trade NYSE all that much, but I do watch it. What makes you think its always the spec gaming the price? Could easily by the upstairs traders, funds, other daytraders. You really think one 'man' spends all day manipulating price? So who manipulates the price on Nasdaq? Or are those epileptic price movements just plain old order flow ;----)