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To: nihil who wrote (72730)	10/17/1998 8:43:00 AM
From: Chuzzlewit	Respond to of 176387

Nihil, with all respect, I think it's an illusion. I rarely buy at the market, but because I often get filled doesn't mean that I am making the market. The information we lack, of course, is the exact spread at the time your order gets filled and subsequent price movements. My guess is that if you were buying calls both the bid and the asked ticked down, but were too rapid for you to see. How often have you seen a stock trading like this? Bid $20 Ask 20 1/4 last trade 20 1/4 tick up. The next time the screen is refreshed you might see Bid 20 1/4 Ask 20 1/2 last trade 20 1/4. Another point to bear in mind is that on the NASDAQ there are many market makers trading the larger issues, and if you had a level 2 screen you would see that their bids and asks are frequently different. Yet brokerage houses tend to stick to their in house market makers (if they have one). I think that SOES traders exert arbitrage pressure on this system, but even so the spreads between different market makers can be quite sizeable. I don't know enough about the mechanics of the options trading exchanges and how orders are cleared to comment further, but if something akin to a level 2 screen existed for options it would be most helpful. TTFN, CTC