Takes the other side
Only the exchange or the counter party knows. Anyone else who tells you differently is blowing smoke. Could be another spec(s) working an offer, could be a market maker(s) working an offer, could be a combination of parties.
Takes the other side
%%In this instance, "working the market" is drawing in buyers that will sell shortly after, sell likely at a lower price, to large buyers. Is that correct? the MM's are taking relatively little heat on their shorts. I've observed these mini trends (higher lows, lower highs) for quite some time and something always seemed synthetic about them.

,,





%%Thoughts: impossible to predict, that news event moved markets more than any technical indicators. Perhaps technicals can work in short-term, but they don't move things as much as news, data releases do.

,,Here's what moved markets most today:
China is no longer considered a currency manipulator by the USA. S&P up 0.7%.
Thoughts: impossible to predict, that news event moved markets more than any technical indicators. Perhaps technicals can work in short-term, but they don't move things as much as news, data releases do.
Is it possible that you don't know what a market maker is?
It's quite a different matter than news or events or technicals.
How someone can be a "market maker" on the front month of something already liquid, like the ES, is difficult for me to fathom...

I'd like a clarification on that.
In my mind, a "market maker" is one who provides liquidity to a market.
So for example, if CL 2026 in June has no volume because there is no bid or offer, you come in and offer, say, 1000 contracts on a price. Is that "making a market", because you are offering opportunities to everyone else?
How someone can be a "market maker" on the front month of something already liquid, like the ES, is difficult for me to fathom, because the market is already "made". The liquidity is there!
How am I doing on market-making 101 class?
Liquidity providers (Market Makers, MM's) in ES are trading the index basis. This is the real-time differential of the individual stock component bids and offers and the ES book (price ladder) on CME Globex.
This is also called the "Premium" or just "PREM"
https://www.cmegroup.com/education/...ndex-products/what-is-equity-index-basis.html
The index basis is the difference between the ES bid/offer and the cash bid/offer in the underlying stocks (both on listed exchanges and in dark pools).
To trade the basis requires near instantaneous execution on multiple exchanges. This requires High Frequency Trading (HFT) and the use of state-of-the-art technology, servers co-located to multiple exchanges and huge amounts of capital.
Related Topics
Program Trading, Index Arbitrage, The PREM, ES Fair Value
Resources (some of these are selling stuff so caveat emptor and I'm not endorsing any of it)
http://www.indexarb.com/
https://programtrading.com/faq.htm
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For the CBOT U.S. treasury market (ZF, ZN, ZB, UB) it is a lot more complicated.
Here's the CME link for the Treasuries Basis
https://www.cmegroup.com/education/...reasuries/the-basics-of-treasuries-basis.html
This stuff involves BrokerTec, Cheapest-to-Deliver (CTD) and On-the-Run (OTR) treasuries, Conversion Factors, and other data feeds based on the cash treasury market.
I don't really understand it yet.... @bone knows about this stuff!
As for CL, NG, RB, and the other ones......
I don't and probably won't ever understand the market making going on in energies. @bone probably knows this stuff better than anybody here.