Quote from oraclewizard77:
"At an industry conference on market structure in May, a panel on market centers broached the subject of "flash" orders and almost ended in fisticuffs. In one corner was defending champion William O'Brien, CEO of Direct Edge. In the other was Larry Leibowitz, his hot-under-the-collar opponent from the Big Board...The head of U.S. execution and global technology at NYSE Euronext assailed Direct Edge's Enhanced Liquidity Provider or ELP program as the "enhanced look" program, comparing it to the advance look at orders that NYSE specialists used to get. That practice was seen as giving specialists unfair advantages over other market participants, and potentially disadvantaging order senders.
Wait, Flash orders, enhanced looks... What?
From the article:
Flash orders are also called "step up" or "pre-routing display" orders. The rationale for these order types is simple: Better me than you. They allow a venue to execute marketable orders in-house when that market is not at the national best bid or offer, instead of routing those orders to rival markets. They do this by briefly displaying information about the order to the venue's participants and soliciting NBBO-priced responses. [TD: frontrunning is not quite the right word here, but it fits so damn well] If there are no responses, the order can be canceled or routed to the market with the best price."
Its front running. I usually buy stocks market order to allow for fast execution since I am not worried about a few pennies. However, I have seen reports of limit orders where the price has traded down below the limit and then come back up without the order being filled. So who stole the order? I would assume its GS.
Also, on some future orders where I notice my stops always fill but sometimes price will hit the target but not get filled. Again, GS is f$%king with us.