"60 Minutes" Runs "H.F.T.S." story again on August 11, 2013
- Thread starter JesseJamesFinn
- Start date
manoj buddies at work. i was trying to buy pathetic 100 shares at bid.
no matter where i place my bid-there is always a manoj with his fake size. i lower the bid-he lowers the bid. i raise-he raise. i cancel-bid drops. it's all fake,with the message attached-you buy at the ask,bitch or you will get nothing. liquidity providers my ass
no matter where i place my bid-there is always a manoj with his fake size. i lower the bid-he lowers the bid. i raise-he raise. i cancel-bid drops. it's all fake,with the message attached-you buy at the ask,bitch or you will get nothing. liquidity providers my ass
it is legal.but i'm certain that before my order to sell him few hundred shares will reach the exchange-manoj will be able to WITHDRAW his fake order. OR-someone will be ahead of me(could be same manoj).i have too many executions today,but next time if i remember some particular stock- i will show you the actual examples of such event.
but in this particular case manoj's goal is (like i said above) to create an appearance of fake activity\size on the bid. a bluff. nothing illegal,but very annoying to see this crap all day long. specially when you are trying to exit\enter. and if you see T&S further (for this particular stock) manoj actually did succeed in his bluffing techniques and able to sell couple hundred shares at 12.11-12.12,right after that-price collapses to 12(while overall market was flat).so-no one is really buying anything and all this 'trading' is nothing,but bluffing. problem is-the speed and subpenny alone give 'them' practically unlimited advantage over retail. this is the reason,why US markets are dry and volume is all time low. cause people don't trade anymore. when one participant can place order 0.00000001 better than your price and you can't do that(you can't even see such trades in many platforms)-this is where people feel that they are been cheated by manoj. unable to compete in short term-they just left. you can see it even by activity on this forum.
this is why i call it a BS. get real,they are out there for themselves,not for you,'providing' liquidity.
what i notice that lately, trading on 'not so liquid' stocks is kind of going in bursts. and many times i see that my small lot act as a trigger.
you buying or selling 100-200 shares on some dead stock-and then -boom! barrage of executions all over the place after your trade.
you tell this somebody else. IMO-HFT is very vague\broad term and it can have many faces\ways. my definition of HFT is very simple-it's a set of technical and\or regulatory advantages of one participant over SOME other market participants. it could be anything,that i CAN't do. i can't place subpenny orders, i can't place a lot of orders and cancel them in same second. any retail broker will kick you out in same day after you try that. the list of ' i can't do's' can be very long.
i've been around for a while and i see it every single day that as the markets get dry(compared to where we are back in 2000-2005-2007)-'they' been tough on retail and willing to fight for every penny(or even a fraction of it). times are tough not only for retail,but for whole entire industry. it's a dog eat dog time.
If it's not considered manipulation then I would try to make money off these algos. Before bidding, perhaps you post a hidden offer that you could then walk him into. I doubt it's that simple but you seem to have a considerable amount of screen time watching these algos, so I would guess you've picked up on some predictable behavior. If it is HFT players at work in these illiquid issues then I'd bet it's a generic algo that you could pick off for a while bouncing around from name to name before they adjust (just a guess, I have no HFT experience). You definitely might want to check on the legality though, weren't those guys that got put in jail for picking off Timber Hill doing something similar?
EDIT: Looks like this is a terrible idea...not very different at all ... http://www.securitiestechnologymonitor.com/news/norwegian-day-traders-arrested-25971-1.html I wouldn't try something like that without having it explicitly blessed by whoever polices that stuff.
I think those subpenny prints are internalized orders rather than HFT. Unless they're RPI orders which you and I can send through IB.
I'm not arguing with you that it's practically useless to submit passive orders these days - I've switched to almost exclusively being a liquidity taker after several futile efforts. Have you ever considered switching to Lime? You still wouldn't be the fastest out there obviously, but it would help and also open up some other opportunities. Not to mention IB's minimum commission charge of $.70 has to add up for you with a lot of 100-200 shares orders, no?