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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: genejockey who wrote (15299)2/27/1999 2:48:00 PM
From: Anthony@Pacific  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 122087
 
They are all MM's and they all use INCA and ISLD..as a matter of a fact they are the biggest users of INCA period..thats how they backdoor ..they can be on the bid but really selling on the offer through INCA



To: genejockey who wrote (15299)2/27/1999 3:08:00 PM
From: Mama Bear  Respond to of 122087
 
"if I see a MM moving up or down on the bid on Level 2, could that be a reflection of the MM displaying a bid for a customer"

Absolutely. The Manning rules dictate that all orders must be displayed to the market within 30 seconds. If I put in an order to sell at the offer it appears on L2, usually NITE will display.

Since RAJA has a buy rec on OMGA, it is not unlikely that they were taking shares into inventory to supply to their customers. They may have even been making a cold call or two to stir up some demand on Friday.

Barb



To: genejockey who wrote (15299)2/27/1999 4:02:00 PM
From: Katelew  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 122087
 
Dear Howard,

WOW!!! You just asked questions of a 'general practioner' that need to go to a specialist like Anthony. While working, I knew next to nothing about the machinations of MMs...am trying to learn it now from this thread. The small office I worked in didn't even have Level II capabilities until after I left in 1997, in fact just got it last summer. Finding out exactly what my broker-friends do, if anything, with these capabilities is on my list of theings to do this week.

My guess is that the typical retail broker, such as I was, would not personally shop an order such as you described, but would simply enter a market order and leave it to the trading desk at Merrill to locate the best price. I say that because Merrill is trying to defend its full commission structure by claiming superior order execution. For ex. if I had placed a market order for OMGA thru Merrill, my confirmation might read "ML/NYSE PRIME PRICE IMPVMNT ON THIS TRADE SAVED YOU....followed by a dollaar amt. Sometimes these s savings are substantial, usually they just reduce the commission by 10 to 20 percent. At any rate, the idea behind all this, is that Merrill's trading desk will direct your order to the best MM at the moment.

Where I'm confused is with the following example. Last fall I shorted Schering Plough. I got a confirmation saying I'd received a price improvement. Since I know Merrill makes a market in the stock, I remember wondering why I would get a better price from one ML market maker vs. another because I thought they were all employees of the firm??? At any raate, I'll going to start learning more about the structure of all of this in the near future. The problem will be that I suspect my own broker and former co-workers won't really know anymore than I do. Not to necessarily disparage any of us.....we just never felt a need to know....and our focus was on long term investing where small price differentials didn't matter.

Don't know if I've added anything to your understanding....suspect you're way ahead of me. I do have a questions for you, though, to answer if you can, at your convenience. I thought the type of collusion you so carefully observed and described in your posts was either done away with or made more difficult by recent legal changes re. market making?????

Highest regards to you,

Daisy



To: genejockey who wrote (15299)2/27/1999 8:36:00 PM
From: who cares?  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 122087
 
When I look at a level 2 screen, is it correct for me to assume that all bids/offers being displayed are from MM's besides those from INCA, ARCA or ISLD?

No this is not right. There are others like TNTO L.L.C. TERRA NOVA TRADING, and REDI LEEDS & KELLOGG/ECN SPEAR. TNTO is what a lot of daytraders trade through, REDI is more your professional guy, the hedge fund manager that works from the home etc., i'm sure there's more besides these. Inca, and ISLD like Anthony said, are commonly used by MM's to hide their true intention. This is one of the things that seperate the average daytrader from the elite, being able to notice quickly which MM is best bid when INCA is on the ask or vice versa, and spotting other fakes.
E-Trade uses NITE for their MM. Schwab uses MASH, they own MASH. Most of the on-line brokerages use NITE and own small pieces of it. Ehhh, they probably unloaded their shares in the run-up. Typically if you place an order to buy 1000k at say 35 through E-trade and it's bid 35-ask 35 1/8 not a damn thing will happen. You'll see NITE at 34 5/8 or some other number way off the bid. If it bids 34 15/16 or 7/8 suddenly you'll get your stock bought at 35, otherwise, unless NITE thinks it's fixing to tank and he's loaded up, you won't get the buy. He has to make a profit somehow, after all he pays E-trade for your business. You won't see him hit the bid, or anything. Of course he could be shopping your order to the active sellers on selectnet, but that takes effort, he's not going to put any effort into helping an E-Trader pick-up a 1000 shares. He could really care less if you get your shares bought, obviously if you wanted to really buy the stock you'd have put in a market order and let him screw you out of the spread. Instead by bidding at the bid your probably just one of those daytrading scum that makes it so tough for him to make 1/4 and 1/2's on every share, so he's not going to help you. This is why it's best to do it yourself with one of the MBtrading or Cyberbroker types. Of course they're not the best for shorting, they don't have the shares on the hot issues, but with Anthony picks you don't have to worry about that extra 1/16th, so you can use other means.
CMB