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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rentech(RTK) - gas-to-liquids and cleaner fuel -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: SKARLOEY who wrote (6165)7/16/1998 1:43:00 PM
From: S.C. Barnard  Respond to of 14347
 
bid size and ask size respectively



To: SKARLOEY who wrote (6165)7/16/1998 2:17:00 PM
From: Lawrence Burg  Respond to of 14347
 
In hundreds...
20,400 bid @ 1 1/2
10,000 asking 1 9/16



To: SKARLOEY who wrote (6165)7/16/1998 3:16:00 PM
From: Micropicker  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 14347
 
Bid Size and Ask Size. A price indicator?

The usual bid and ask for RNTK has been 50, or 5000 shares. This is the maximum trade size a MM will take before they have a chance to adjust the price. When a MM doesn't want to buy many of your shares, he will lower it to 10, or 1000 shares.

Sometimes (but not always) you can follow changes in the bid and ask sizes to predict a price change. If you see the MM sitting at an ask size of 50, he has lots of shares to sell. If the number drops to 25, and then to 10, then he is either running out of shares to sell, or is watching the price carefully because he feels it is going up soon. This is a "poor" man's only look at Level II action.

The current trade sizes of 204 x 100 are unusually large. They are indicative of lots of volume on both the selling and buying sides, and he has good inventory on both sides. With a spread of 1/16th, the MM is in no mood to see that change. He is profiting handsomely.

And the last variable in the mix is Level II, which tells you which MMs are sitting at the bid and ask. You can't tell without it if this is one MM taking most of the action, or if it is different MMs--one selling off a bunch of shares and another buying them up.

And finally, without Level II, you cannot tell if a certain MM was shorting into the last runup and is now buying a boatload back in order to cover those shorts. You may have noticed Tokyo Joe's question to Dennis Yakobson included reference to two MMs in Denver.