21 trades happened in one minute. ALL of them sells. Totaling a whopping 189,872 shares. The majority of these happening in a ten second window where ten trades were made.
The level 2 bid sizes at this time were:
0.3803 = 2800
0.3801 = 7500
0.38 = 171427
During the minute, the sells were in chunks that were just enough to break down these three levels and not a single share more. The extra 8,145 shares were added to the bid along the way and were instantly adjusted to and taken out accordingly.
Do you think this lightning fast and razor precision trading is the work of anything other than algorithms designed for a specific purpose? A purpose they've become increasingly efficient at. I could show 500 more examples just like this over the past couple of months. This is what you're up against, and this is what the market has become.
It's impossible to compete with these things, and even if you try they won't let you. I used to try to execute similar buy-chain strategies to mimic the algorithms. Maybe fool them. It's worked well for me in other tickers if I can be REALLY fast. But here they would recognize me, and refuse to even fill the first part of the order. They'd then readjust the entire book and slowly begin to let it play before I'd just cancel.
To say this is a free and fair market is absurd, and this ticker in particular has had some of the most blatant combinations of all the worst things it has to offer.
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