GA, answers to your questions:
"Steve,
A few more questions related to listed trading for you:
1) How many stocks is one specialist usually in charge of? Do they usually handle related stocks, i.e. several stocks in the oil sector or drug sector?
**Related stocks...not in my experience. Specialists treat their businesses like McDonald Franchises...they are usually passed down in the family and rarely change hands...very valuable entities, probably the biggest profit centers in the business. A specialist could handle several stocks...depends on the stock.
2) Is there any resource to find out what firm the specialist of a certain stock works for? And any way of finding out what other stocks that specialist is in charge of?
**Not that I know of, but perhaps you should check the exchange website, ie...nyse.com, amex.com,etc. and email their resouce links the question.
3) What is the relationship between the inside quote that we see and the specialists book?
**the inside quote is the specialist book, WITH the third markets and secondary exchanges...when the nyse is the superior bid/ask it is the inside market. when a third market is superior it might be, lets say
10 bid NYSE x 10 1/8 (trimark - thirdmarket) where the NYSE offer is 10 3/16...a consolidated inside quote would be 10 x 1/8th.
As the book changes does the quote automatically change, or does the specialist change the quote independently of what he/she has on the book? **Can be on auto or manual..but yes, the nyse book which is the inside market a large percentage of time, is changed as the trades go off on the nyse and book changes.
Regards,
Steve@yamner.com |
