Quote from MR.NBBO:
Yes, possible....just ask a specialist. There are so many screwball things I've seen on the tape-it'd blow your mind. Almost all are related to "price improvement" so forget NEGATIVE OBLIGATION.
But "YES" to all your questions.
HOW DO YOU PENNY A MARKET ORDER?--Just get a NY specialist license to steal...that simple!
OK, let's think about this for another minute. A market order that gets "pennied" is helping the market order. And it is more likely that a broker in the crowd would be doing the perceived "pennying" ..not the specialist.
A stock shows a bid of 59.20, a market sell order comes in, a broker has a "not held" order that he is "working" in the crowd. The Specialist is aware of this not held order, and asks if the broker wants to pay more for this order, he chooses to do so, and the market order gets "price improvement" (over the NBBO bid).
Specialists watch many, many, stocks...and most of the trading is done by the clerks's (super good clerks, from what I've seen)...and the clerk's cannot change orders, or fill orders themselves (by pennying or anything else...they cannot even "match" two market orders).
I know it's in fashion now to blame the Specialists or even the system, but the more you know about how it really works, the better you'll feel about it. Good traders, as I'm sure you guys are, don't want to waste the energy looking for conspiracies in every trade.
Find stocks that don't "penny" you - actually pretty easy to do. I have my guys trade the stocks, day in and day out, that have tight spreads, good executions, and a Specialist that we actually get along with....hard as that might be to believe.
I believe firmly in working "with" the Specialist and the System... and it seems to be working well.
Yes, there are some bad guys, Yes, the system is not perfect, but, much like our Democartic Capitalist system, it is the best that we have...
Have fun, make money...
