Quote from syswizard:
You've got solid, verifiable proof of that statement ? Funny thing, Lehman Bros is running a quant trading model based on that very premise. It originated from the University of Penn.
Where do you think fragmentation of orders came from? Noone wants to show size if all you are gonna get is a bunch of daytraders front running it and preventing it from getting filled. If the guy is showing BIG size, he knows there is a high chance of getting it filled.
Guys have been making programs pennying size ever since decimalization, especially on Nasdaq. You don't know exactly what Lehman is doing and neither do I, but I highly doubt that leaning on big sizes as a direction indication is the summary of their strategy. It is most likely analysis of bids vs offers on several levels, whether the fills are on bid vs offer and on what level. This is actually not new and is sold by a service which claims to detect institutional accumulation. You do not even know if what Lehman is doing is even successful, and probably won't find out unless you know someone on the inside.
Everyone sees the size, so how exactly is it an edge? I remember the best longs were the ones where you see mostly big offers, and the daytraders keep trying to short against it, only providing rocket fuel for when the size gets lifted. So then daytraders caught on and started looking for offers getting lifted as an indication to go long and then that stopped working most of the time. In the end, there became little correlation for either side, no easy simple way to read direction & moves based on sizes of the bids & offers. That's competition.
You can observe stocks on Nasdaq going up with 100-300 share refreshers that alternate between different MMs and ECNs, all while the big sizes are on the offers. And then you can also see stocks go up with big bids coming up and few offers showing, yet the bids do get hit nonstop. There is little correlation and it has been like this for years. Where the big boys and bigger traders start going after the smaller ones is gaming them by faking sizes or simply whacking them to cause panick market orders. With NYSE Hybrid, I know it is even easier done by the guys with order flow info. On Naz this can even be input in the order fill program.
Anyone who traded off NYSE bids & offers knows what I am talking about. And anyone who was a L2 reader back before the black boxes took over, knows even better.
Quote from Singer:
I'm a younger trader, focusing on consistency and increasing my risk gradually as my net worth goes up. But beyond that, I don't need to explain myself to a troll... and I shouldn't need to explain that to ANY trader, really.
Aight there champ, I see you totally missed the central point of my comment. Either you have no sense of humor or you're trying too hard to convince.