I finally got a breakout and what the hell happened

tttinvest · Mar 21, 2003

I bought amzn at 27.19 and rode it to 27.48 and my sell triggered. It was at the top when it pulled back. The only thing that happened, was IB sold 116 shares to Island and about five minutes later, sold 84 shares to supersoes for 27.30. What happened?

limitdown · Mar 21, 2003

seems that many more persons saw the breakout and traded it, faded it, and ran it up.

that topside blow-off pattern is indicative of mostly traders participating in the action and virtually no investors or large position holders (read funds, etc.)

you'll need to be fading far faster than you are to be able to maintain the visable prints, because by the time your order hits the boards, those quotes are old news, even if its in the same few seconds....

tttinvest · Mar 21, 2003

Thanks! I figured that I should have sold a little earlier, but by the time I blinked, bam!

limitdown · Mar 21, 2003

Quote from tttinvest:

Thanks! I figured that I should have sold a little earlier, but by the time I blinked, bam!

Bling, Bling

trendy · Mar 21, 2003

Did you have a single sell order at $27.48? Or, did you enter a second sell order at $27.30 after the first one was only partially filled? I

trader3 · Mar 21, 2003

Quote from tttinvest:

I bought amzn at 27.19 and rode it to 27.48 and my sell triggered. It was at the top when it pulled back. The only thing that happened, was IB sold 116 shares to Island and about five minutes later, sold 84 shares to supersoes for 27.30. What happened?

Sorta sounds like you had a stop limit order working and got a partial fill of 116 on ISLD at the top and were put in the book for the other 84 which was not filled and then you entered another order (perhaps market) and got filled at 27.30 for the rest. I wonder if you still have a working order to sell 84 AMZN at your limit in the book.

Lobster · Mar 21, 2003

Sounds to me like you are describing the very reason why most traders can't make money trading Nasdaq anymore. You have to be extremely fast in addition to extremely good.

jaan · Mar 21, 2003

Quote from tttinvest:
The only thing that happened, was IB sold 116 shares to Island and about five minutes later, sold 84 shares to supersoes for 27.30. What happened?

SMART routing, right? i've learned that SMART does not handle odd lots too well -- basically, whenever the current best bid (ask) is an order that does not accept odd lots, the SMART routing will just sit there with your odd lot sell (resp, buy) order and do nothing.

the only way to get a fill (besides waiting for the no-odd-lots bid/ask to get out of the way) is to cancel your market order, and enter a limit order with price below the blocking bid(s) (resp, above the blocking ask(s)). or use different routing, that is.

- jaan

tttinvest · Mar 22, 2003

It was a stop limit that triggered on the sell of 27.48. Immediately, the stock started tumbling and once the dust settled, I was watching IB trying to dump 84 shares of my stock and they finally found someone at 27.30 where the stock settled after the selling.

tttinvest · Mar 22, 2003

Jaan,

As I was watching this, I wondered if I could have cancelled and put in another sell order below that hopefully would have been taken.