Quote from Don Bright:
kwancy wrote on 07-13-06 08:38 PM:
Hey Don, I do not quite understand the imbalance on NYSE and NASDAQ that you mention, can you articulate?? Thanks
Sure. First off, the Specialists at the NYSE receive "Market on Close" orders (MOC) all during the day until 3:40PM Eastern, this is not done the same way on the NASDAQ. . These can be very large orders where the brokers/banks/funds/institutions are willing to either buy or sell shares at the final price of the day (the "closing" price). For example, there may be 1 million shares to sell (at any price), and 500,000 shares to buy (at any price), all marked MOC. That would leave an "imbalance" of 500,000 shares extra to sell.
At 3:40 the Specialist publishes that imbalance (I have a column for that on my RediPlus screen, and they also send it out via Dow Jones and Reuter's I believe). After seeing these imbalances, traders can place MOC orders offsetting the imbalance only, they cannot add to the imbalance. In this case they could send buy orders, MOC. Knowing this, our traders place sell short orders first (in this case), right after seeing the imbalance. When filled, they then place the MOC buy order which will close that trade after the bell rings with the MOC order. Imbalances are re-published at 3:50 Eastern, and are often either lessened in share size, or they go away altogether. If the imbalance goes away at 3:50, you can no longer enter any MOC order.
Going back to June 30th when we had the Russell 2000 "re-balancing" take place (that is when the index managers add some stocks and remove others), we saw many large imbalances, so our traders did the above and made excellent money. For example, my nephew had shorted PG right after 3:40, and right after the bell at 4PM the stock price gapped down 80 cents, thus giving him a big profit. PG was just one of many that reacted in a similar manner.
Our traders always look at the imbalances for the stocks they trade on a daily basis, which gives them additional information for end of day trading even if they don't actually place MOC orders.
Hope this helps.
Don