Hello Guys, i have a question, i experienced this really strange behaviour of a specialist. The stock (FTE) was BID 45x 8.83 OFFER 75x 8.95 To test my TWS hotkeys, i sent an order BUY 100 @ 8.83. It took a sec, as always, but the bid changed not to 46x 8.83, as it should be, he showed BID 1x 8.85 !!!! I cancelled, as the order went red, the bid dropped back to where it was. Where the hell does he want to take the $0.02 from??? He would'nt have done it to run front me, there were the 4500 right behind me, it was obviously another order, he would have run in front of this anyway before. I don't quite understand. Regards Sascha
it's called being 'pennied.' Specialist keeping his turf, cutting you out. sometimes I think there is software that automatically keeps someone high bid or low offer. I've seen done with software on ISLD. It is a nuisance.
@chas: i see your point. of course. but why didn't he do this with the 45 lots which were bid for before at exactly my level ??? I only added 1 to the 45 which were already there. It could also be that he just made a mistake.
i see it too much to think it's a mistake. not sure what interest one would have in doing that other than what I suggested. the 45 lots may have been his bid. there may be 3rd party software that pulls it off, as I had seen on isld, that is not specialist related.
@chas: i can see theoretically one type of interest. i noticed, that in these illiquid foreign stocks you sometimes get extremely good fills with small orders. once i had an order to sell some stock, small size, at the bid. i was filled 2 cents higher than the offer was. dunno how this happened. maybe they want to "catch" traders who get into one stock, like a casino does. i admit this suggestion is very vague. Sascha
love when he fills someone a penny below my offer. what's the point of doing that? To say "!@#$%^&* you!"?
everyone thinks at some point that specialists are superhuman. in reality, they're just everyday a$$holes who use their advantage to screw the incoming order flow. they get to back away from their posted quotes, frontrun, penny you, post false bids and offers, etc... if you could cheat, you'd probably win alot more, too...