Can you get filled at 0.01 or 4000.00?

[n00b7r4d3r]

ive noticed that on low volume stocks (espically during extended market hours) that sometimes the bid / ask will be 0.01 /4000 and sometimes on higher volume stocks i see the bid or ask flash as one of these prices during heavy market activity.

my question is do ppl actually sometimes get filled at these prices and should i be worried about getting filled at 0.01 if there is a crazy sell off in something and i use a market order to get out fast? i understand that the chance of this happening is small as long as you trade reasonable volume stocks but i sometimes see random ticks that go all the way to 0 or 4000 that usually make the chart unreadable. ppl refer to these as "bad prints" ...are these corrupted data points or places where some poor sap who tryed to buy 100 of qqqq and paid $400.000 or sold 100 for $1?

 

[PinkBunny]

If you make a trade more than a few % points outside of the last print, the trade will go bust. The poor sap who pays $400 for QQQQ will get his money back.

 

[Toonces]

A few years ago I had a problem at times with TWS not allowing me to adjust my price. So I would click on a bid or ask, change it up or down, and even though the price would look like it was changed, it would stay at the price I originally clicked on. Once I got filled selling 300 shares of a $15 stock for .01. Of course I called IB, and the trades got busted.

I think traders who try to buy or sell at ridiculous prices like this are scum. Sometimes you will see a $9.20 stock, for example, asking at $92. Easy to trip someone up if they're not paying attention. They're hoping that someone will trade against them, and they know that the trade will almost certainly be busted, but in the off chance it doesn't, they make big bucks. And it's an inexperienced trader, without a lot of money to lose, who is more likely to make this kind of mistake.