I'm a new daytrader and I have felt that I was being messed with too on the Nyse, but, later, I analyzed a few things, and of course, factored in the possibility of being messed with. But, if it is not the market makers, specialists, then it could be the trader's themselves. Being messed with at times is the nature of the markets but let me state my opinion.
When you were messed with, what were you doing? Did you see a stock that was going up and down in a 1/4 point range and you said, "cool, I'll buy a 1000 shares, and when it goes up even .15, i'll make $150 minus my $10 or $20 commission". So you buy it, and all of a sudden, right when you buy it, it goes down .15, then .25, then .35 and you say, "darn it", you sell and all of a sudden, it goes back up.
Yea, it's happened to me when I first started out and I was all upset for the day and it seem to happen a couple times. But, then I learned that I was not following my plans, I was not using all the knowledge I learned, such as, time of day, news, markets trending which way, sectors doing what. I was looking for a new faster easy technique. For me, I keep the possibility of "being messed with by the specialists" in the back of my mind as a possibility, but my boucing off the trendline seems to work, then the indicators line up, or close to it and it does what I thought the stock is supposed to do. For me, more knowledge and more experience and being patient works for me. But it is slow and I want it to go faster, but experience only goes so fast. Anyway, everyone is different but 90% of the books I read about the markets and trading contain deception and fakeouts because it makes more money.
Ok, just rambling on a sunday. Good luck. Right now, I have about 3 months live daytrading experience, started with $27000 in capital, didn't lose it, and make between $20 and $200 a day. I know, pretty bad, but I figure, the money per day will increase with experience.
Let me know if you find a predictable market.
PS, of course my best day was around the last day in Feb when google tanked and i shorted it and made $1800 in 72 seconds. I felt like Gordon Gecko for a day.