You still get price improvement in say, WMT, but not near as much as you used to. When the market gets wild, as it did friday morning with the bin laden rumor, I got out of longs in the big prints at the 50 cents and the dollar above. When things are wild, the specialist is doing things as he always has. But during and avg day, when I would usually get price improvement, I have been passed over, then filled at my limit price, then watched him immediately print through me where I should have been improved to. I appears that they are giving the price improvement to the big orders crossing and taking liquidity, not those of us who are allready on the book providing liquidity. This type of fills really turns me off of NYSE trading if it gets worse.
Another thing that bothers me is in the past, if the specialist wants to gap the bid and print a big order, he would actually change his quote price and print the order within his bid-offer spread. Now he isn't even changing his listed quote. He will print where ever the hell he wants to without giving any kind of indication. Two examples both from yesterday morning on wmt. Right after the bell it had a down move, I was short the 90 and 85, bidding the 77 as his bid was the 75. I got printed at the 73, which was nice price improvement I thought since he was still shoeing a bid of 75. Then within 15 seconds, he started printing the 60, still with his bid at 75. The second part of my order I had bid at 70 and never got the improvement at 60. I actually never got out until he brought his offer down to I believe the 66.
Second example, I am long around the 15-20 cents when the binladen news comes out. ( I don't remember the exact price). The specialist slowly moved up to the 27 offer, printing next to nothing on the move up. I wasn't offering at all because I was waiting for him to gap his price up as he usually does. He starts printing blocks at the 50, when he is still at the 27.
This is a huge problem in my way of thinking, because he doesn't have to honor his quotes at all anymore. I got no shares from the specialist on the news, which is nothing new anymore. The bastard doesn't give out any shares when you want them for the last 2 months. The only reason I get shares on this is because I crossed up 15 cents from the get go and picked off ecns and regionals before they knew the news. I put out 34 damn orders all the way up into the 40s and got 500 shares total all from networks beside the nyse specialist. Allowing them to print outside their published bid-offer spread allows the ass holes to back away and never honor their quotes if they want to. This is a major problem in my book whether you get price improvement or not. You will still get some fills from price improvement and it will allow you t be happy, but that one time you are wrong, and you cross the limits on the book and get no shares because he doesn't have to honor any quotes, it will hurt.
Go back to my first example. What if you were long the 75, the prick specialist is bidding the 75, you see him printing the 73 so you try to bail, you see my bid at 70 so you cross to like the 68 to make sure you get it, but instead of him printing anything on his book, he starts printing the 60 and you are out 15 cents when you should have only lost say flat to 5 cents. Second example: You are short on the futures pullback before the Binladen news, say the 20-25. He is offering the 20, you cross up 15 cents to get out when the news hits, his offer raises to 27, but you think you should still get out because you are crossing that way up, and BAM, he is printing the 50, and then pulling to the even dollar. You are very screwed because he doesn't have to honor anything anymore.
Sorry for the Ramble, this just pisses me off.