When you say "trained", do you mean through pattern recognition (i.e. of the trading activity) it makes educated guesses, or through gathering the blantant facts?
...unless you are placing a big enough trade to give reason for the specialist to do a reversal--noting he is usually your counterparty. EDIT: By the way, "big enough trade" momentarily can be pretty small (till the stocks course continues)
how do you know this? what year are you living in? as many have already stated the specialist is a computer now.
These computers have artificial intelligence. The computers knows you are traders. They don't care who or what broker you are from.
My impression is that part of the artificial intelligence is identifying the enemy & squeezing him out. E.g. while usually if a big bid is placed it can have an impact on the stock, but if the day trader already took up a position & is being squeezed puts in another big bid, it won't help him.
conspiracy is not good. actually the market is larger than MM's or specialists. I think they do not know what your individual are doing, but they are better positioned than you individulas (the trading crowd) since they have better data feeding, better knowledge and better informed. they may see large order before you see it, or they feel the selling pressure or the buying pressure better than you since they are everyday in the market, every change is noticed by them, that is their job, becuase of their deep involvement, they alreday developed sixth sense (their edge) to fisrt act on the opportunity. actually you are able to develop sizth sense too, but it will take years and money to have this sense or your EDGE
Perhaps you could give us an example: No of shares traded...average daily volume of stock....etc etc.. With big cap stocks you are merely a speck of dust SteveD
You people are idiots and obviously aren't hacking it as traders if you think Specialists are after you. Do you think the WMT specialist that trades 20mil shares a day gives a flying fuck about some jerk off day trader trying to paint a top with 500 shares? He doesn't as well as every other Specialist on the floor. Get over it. If you feel that the Specialists are after you, learn to trade alongside the Specialist. This thread reminds me of that Saturday Night Live skit about robots. Can't seem to find it on youtube - that was some funny shit!
option trader, my suggestion to you is 1. screw options, get into futures 2. Buy Gold 3. Take Delivery 4. Find yourself a nice cave in the mountains and leave everyone alone so we can concentrate on what can be controlled. Im embarrassed for you.
You sound like a loser who wants to blame the system for his failings. If you dont like equities go and trade futures where arent any specialits or is that too obvious. Not that they would give a shit about a retail piker anyway.