BB Stocks trade on what is referred to sometimes as the pinks, the pink sheets. While there is no electronic execution system for them, market makers can display indications of interest...on the NAsdaq Workstation, you would get a quote on abcd bulletin board by entering the symbol proceeded by a three...so 3ABCD ...you will get a level 2 display, showing various mm and bids/ask. Quote sizes are for like 200 shares usually and as note, since its not electronic, you can't soes, snet, etc. against the position. You have to call zyx firm and ask for your 10k of some 5cent stock. You could imagine now how difficult it is to get 20k of a 1cent stock, a whopping two dollar investment, especially whent he quote is .005 to .01 andonly 1k is offered at 1.
Getting out of a fast moving stock...ECNs or ISLD in particular is fine if you want to offer stock into a strong market or if ISLD/ECN is biddng and you can hit them via their interface. But if they are not, you can always go with a SOES market order (eeek!) or a SNET preference order to some mm on the bid, although, electronically, they might 'miss' or 'backaway' and not blink. If something is really flying, I'll call a major mm like nITE or MASH and once I get a trader on the phone there's no backing away. ....sure, it might take an extra 4 seconds to get the trader, but let me tell you, YHOO when its jumping, SOES cue would be 10x that if you even get it off at all). Again, we're talking extremes here, not the norm.
Regards,
Steve@yamner.com |
