here is some insights from my x-mm friend DOAKES79:
Posted by: DOAKES79 Date: Friday, May 09, 2008 2:51:36 PM
In reply to: philmo60 who wrote msg# 34554 Post # of 38016
Here's a quick rundown of my own personal expierience as a MM, keep in mind once you pass your series 7,55,63 you are at the disposal of what ever head trader picks you up as an assistant, so every asst trader is being trained by a different head trader in different scenarios. What I mean is, every asst wants to be picked up by the most expierienced MM in the firm with the best list of stocks, b/c that means more money for them which means more money for you since you get a % of their profit. In some cases you might get picked up by an idiot who has a terrible list of no volume stocks b/c the company don't trust him with anything good on his list. Anyway this is a copy and paste from a PM I sent to someone who had a question regarding MM's and how they buy and sell..
I always bought based on my order book, when I see buy orders for a stock piling up in my order book, I will buy as much as possible while executing orders on the way up until I started to see the buys dwindle in my book and limit sells come in, then I would start to fill any buy orders out of my in house position I accumulated during the run up. By the time the run is over my position is flat and my daily profit is huge, now I will just execute customer orders while playing the Bid and Ask until pps finds a resting place, days like this where I had one big mover was the days I most relied on my assts to bust their a$$ off and execute all orders for other stocks on my list, which wasnt a problem since they knew they were getting a % of me working the most volitile and moving stocks, so we all rely on each other pretty hard and if you can't pull your wieght you are easily replaced without a 2nd chance. As for shorting, I would short only stocks on my list that was visibly diluting knowing that I will have no problem covering EOD at a better price, but at fleet it was frowned upon for any of us to hold shorts overnite in the pinks or otc b/c like you said earlier news trumps all down here. Each company is different though, Fleet was a household name for banking and liked us to make money and encouraged it, but at the same time didn't want us to be cowboys and start taking major risks b/c we had enough order flow where we didnt need to. Nite on the other hand is a different story, they encourage greed and manipulation at the expense of THEIR OWN CUSTOMERS, not just the average shareholder, but I think they have toned down as of recent years from what I heard due to a lot of complaints and investigations. Thats pretty much the best perspective I can provide from a MM's point of view, but like I said everyones story varies based on where they work and who they learned from. Now if you will excuse me I need to ice my fingers and smoke a cigarette after all that writing.
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