Dealer, I'm glad to see that your broker is correcting that
horrible execution. I quit making market orders for
precisely what happened to you. Since I have streaming real
time quotes, plus one or two other real time quote systems
runing when I trade, I can see the flow of the stocks I
trade. Market orders are supposed to take precedence to all
limit orders & the market makers own trades in the cue, but
they rarely do, or at least that's been my experience.
When I used market orders in the past, I regularly got a
bad fill. Sometimes it would take several minutes to get a
confirmation & the price would almost always be far from
the bid ask when I placed the order (funny how limit orders
placed near the bid/ask in similar situations would get
filled in seconds with a confirmation). Since it always
(and I mean 100% of the time) went against me, I knew it
had to be the market maker pocketing my money.
Last year, I placed a market order to short the QQQ's , I
watched & kept checking for my order confirmation......
nothing...... one minute..... nothing..... two minutes
(QQQ's begin falling)..... nothing..... three minutes
(QQQ's in near free fall)..... nothing..... finally, after
about 4 or 5 minutes, I got my confirmation...... at the
low price of the free fall, nearly 1.75% below the price
when my market order was placed..... & the QQQ's had
already bounced back nearly 1/2 of the way back to where I
had placed my order. I almost blew a gasket. I mean, this
was the QQQ's for cripes sake, not some high beta internut
stock.
That did it for me. I made up my mind that I'd use limit
orders all the time. Now, if I need to close a trade & the
stock is moving fast, I place my limit order well above or
below the currrent bid/ask so I would get a fixed price &
not put more easy money in the pocket of the market maker. |
