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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Tara who wrote (8419)	5/11/2000 2:40:00 PM
From: OZ	Read Replies (8) \| Respond to of 18137

Has anyone else noticed a certain computer automated trading system that is appearing all around the NASDAQ. Particularly on the hot tech stocks and also on bio's. What you see is 5 ecn's pop up on the bid or offer at the same instant. For a few seconds or minute, it makes the stock look weak or strong. Then they pull all the bids/offers at the same time and reappear at the next level and then pull them again and reappear at the next level. It totally paints a picture on the level 2 display. Then at some point they jump to the other side. Also, each time they do it, they are showing 200 shares a piece. My level 2 display is set up to display by size. As a result, it is much easier to track this "chunk" of ecn's dancing all around the different price levels. I think when they are pulling off the bids, they are actually buying and when they are lifting the offers, they are actually selling to the people that fall for the setup. usually NO PRINTS are going off at the moment they are pulling. I wish I had 10 mil. to waste and could just wack all their original postings with a SWIPE order and take them out. I bet by the end of the day it would shut them down. I have noticed them on AMGN quite a bit if anyone would like to see and try to figure it out. OZ

To: Jon Tara who wrote (8419)	5/11/2000 6:11:00 PM
From: Threei	Respond to of 18137

Why they did it is anybody's guess. Maybe they were testing the speed of their quote feed. :) LOL, I like this guess :) I would suggest one more, a little bit more serious. Some traders think it could help to revive dying stock activity. On thinly traded issues it's not uncommon for some to miss exit into short-lived news/hype-driven strength. Stock dies and they try to create an impression of active inside market flashing those orders. Well, it worked sometimes long ago when there were plenty of people asking what T&S was. I don't see anyone falling for this now, absence of prints won't go unnoticed nowadays. Vadym