I'm gonna venture that nothing insidious is taking place here for two reasons. 1. HFTs compete fairly vigorously to take all the queue positions that contain alpha. 2. As someone noted earlier, especially in ES, there's a tendency for guys to jump in with some size behind you as soon as you enter the queue and then cancel when enough flow for them to get hit appears imminent. This isn't undergrad subject matter, but I would guess that this is done to induce you to believe the queue behind you is sufficient to give you a high enough expectation of getting filled on the order side after your order gets hit by an aggressor but before the queue behind you runs out. They cancel and go market to take on your order, leaving them with your position, the illusion of strong order flow, and what you would assume to be pretty good queue position on the opposite side at the next price level, therefore they have a pretty good shot at capturing the spread if enough people replace on the fresh bid or offer. Just one explanation though. Others may know better. You would have to be pretty fast to pull this off.
Forget 90's and early 2000's daytrading. Stick to swing trading and let the HFT animals feed off each other. LBR was right. Swing trading is the way. So hot and so right....mmmmm....
it depends on what exchange. if the market maker can beat your order by .005 he gets filled first. if its sell order and nobody is buying. in some exchanges, the professionals or market makers have first fill. they only fill your order don't want to fill it. they can sell .001 lower than your ask price if they want to sell it or put a bid .001 higher than your bid. if they want to buy. if you want to sell it or buy it' put a market order if you want to get filled today. the market makers make money on spread which is there business. there is no difference between $10.05 and $10 if you have only 100 shares to sell today as price changes during the trading day. the market bid is $10 and ask is $10.05