John,
It is very hard to pin down all the shakes and wiggles in which the market makers participate. Also very difficult to differentiate between who's buying and selling when there are a number of MMs on each side of the inside quote (high bid/low ask). It is all but impossible to do any of the above unless one is watching each quote change and trade as they happen. The situations where you can pin down exactly to/from whom we are buying and selling our shares are those when a market maker is alone on a particular side of the quote. I have limited my analysis to those situations. Today, ALLN (MM symbol for Allen & Co) seemed to do some selective buying on the high bid early in the day then dropped out of the inside quote (ie when inside quote was 6 1/2 - 6 3/4, ALLN was quoting 6 3/8 - 7 1/8, meaning they were not particularly interested in doing anything either way). I saw no situation real time that indicated ALLN sold any shares today.
I don't want to bore anyone here or clutter the thread with intraday flunctuations and typical MM activity, as I feel (as most here do!!!) GRNO is a long term keeper. What I will continue to concentrate on is activity on which I can present some fairly definitive analysis.
As for all the other MMs, some could be accumulating on behalf of each other, selling to/buying from each other or playing order flow or the spread. Just too hard to tell and irrelevant to me. I am concentrating on the main man, the top dog, the big cheese, the creme de la creme, you got it, the Allen-meister!!!! Oh, and am also keeping tabs on any new MM entrants. Still the same 13 and holding for now.
One more thing. It's very difficult to tell what's up with trades between the spread unless you know whether the order was placed as a buy or a sell. IE If the quote was 6 1/4 - 6 1/2 and I placed an order to sell at 6 3/8 and it got executed, I would expect the price to move higher short term as the MM was willing to take it off my hands above the high bid. Conversely, if I placed a buy order at 6 3/8 and it got filled, I would be quaking in my short term shoes figuring they were taking it down!!! The MMs pretty much influence the short term trend and I sometimes use that intraday strategy on 1/2 positions when I am uncertain of the direction.
In the long run, it all boils down to supply and demand. The way I look at it, all of us have the supply and the demand is on the way!! <g>
Boy I do get verbose at times, huh!
Hope this helped.
L2 and Long and LP Mark
(I like to go back and see how short an answer I COULD HAVE made, so in this little exercise, it was.... Your question: Is Allen buying today? My answer: yes) |
