Did I get taken by robot?

Deuteronomy_24_7 said:
Whoa! I just meant players without a fundamentally-driven conviction, trading it off technicals / charts with only a weak, changeable view on the name.
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OK, understand "traders lacking conviction" is what you meant. :)
 
Deep Float ... Taken by a Robot.
It's gettin' hot out there !

image.jpeg
 
smallStops said:
Sorry you might not like this.
Except if you are a major volume player on this stock, the spike has nothing to do with you.
No "they" were not waiting for your trades, to then try to shake you out specifically.
Someone could have been unloading at the opening high.
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BONECRUSHER said:
I've had this happen at market openings...never after open. This must be a very illiquid stock...I don't touch these anymore. Anyway, that SUCKS...I'd be pissed off!:banghead:
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screenshot 5.png
This is close day price picture.
screenshot 6.png
This is volume. It become large the day before I entered. Before that, It is a as you said illiquid stock.

I personally like this shape and can make money from this trends. The only thing is how much volatility I should bear. And in this stock, I failed to point a right one.
 
kmiklas said:
This is why I no longer use using limit/stop orders. If you want to protect yourself, hedge and diversity. The minute you put a stop or a limit in to "protect" yourself, you invite this kind of thing in--it's like dropping your left hand after throwing a jab... you're going to catch a right hook to the chin. It's easy money for the market-makers: just spike the price with a block buy/sell and grab your money.

As for the whole "your account is too small for anyone to care about" argument, it's often not just you. If you are noticing a market trend, there's often $10M, $100M, $1B or more playing the same trend. If half of them put stop/limit orders up for protection, the bots detect his opportunity, and spike the price to make lots of commissions. It's a very simple algorithm:

Code: 
const int SPIKE_TARGET = 10000;
while(1) { // endless loop; constantly check
    if (longStopTotal() > SPIKE_TARGET) {
        spikePriceDown();
    } else if (shortStopTotal() > SPIKE_TARGET)  {
        spikePriceUp();
    }
}

longStopTotal() and shortStopTotal() simply return the total value of stop/limit orders in the DOM (aka order book) below and above the bid/ask prices, respectively. In this example, it's set to $10,000, but it's whatever the market maker wants. When there's enough profit there to justify a spike, then the algo fires. In practice, it's a bit more complicated than this, but this example illustrates the core concept.

When I was getting caught like this, I was cursing at my screen so hard that I degaussed my monitor. I was so aggravated by this kind of thing that I started a whole thread on it.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/use-limit-orders.302455/page-5#post-4330998
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I agreed on hedge and diversity strategy. But on this stock, I just want to make a day trade for easy money. And I think I did not point enough volatility to make it. Still, You are quite right on robotic means. When tips are big enough, they would fire on and took money. Maybe market order is a solution for day trade as long as we could have a fast fingers like professional traders.
 
BillKey said:
Then, the right thing I should do is ?
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Manage your trade in a way that avoids being stopped out by noise.

For short term trading, you should have mental stoplosses, i.e. a recognition that your original trade is no longer worth staying in. A little spike here and there can be suffered as long as your original trade works out. You want to stay in the trade long enough to see whether it was a spike or a significant change.

Mechanical stoplosses should be used for catastrophic changes that you may not be capable of judging in time.
 
"You want to stay in the trade long enough to see whether it was a spike or a significant change."

Is it any quantitive figure I can refer to? 'cause it may cause a large number of lost when 'significant change' has been proved after I hold it long enough. I actually was ready to take about 4% lost on this trade, but it is still not big enough when I reviewed it. The question is I am not sure if it is reasonable to give it a 10% tolerance then.
 
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