Tianrong Med Group Inc (TNMD)

[nsomniyak]

I'll take a shot at that.

First way is for small trades - for fewer shares than the "minimum to show on L2" at that price. Those bids and offers will never show on L2 and will frequently fill between the b/a shown on L2.

Second way is a buy order comes in between the high bid and low ask and one of the sellers decides to fill at that price (or vice versa for a sell order). Since L2 never shows the real depth at any price, this can happen without changing the b/a or the number of shares on the high bid or low ask.

I have never worked for an MM or brokerage, but I have had a long career in computer applications. It would be a simple matter to program things so that there is a "show price" that shows on L2, and a different price (higher bid or lower ask) that is "my real high bid or low offer". Additionally, if they are trying to influence the market in a given direction, the algorithm may in fact be programmed to clean up "in between" orders so that the MM can stay high bid and/or low ask on the stock.

If I can think of this just off the top of my head, it is a pretty sure bet that it is already programmed in to the MM algorithms. It is all computerized - there aren't gnomes at each of the MMs personally following over 10,000 otc and pink stocks and manually adjusting the b/a on them as orders come in.