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Friday, May 21, 2010 9:10:05 PM
Heres a few causes.
Most MM's have a bid and an ask. The bid is the price they are willing to pay to buy the stock and the ask is what they are willing to sell for.
Many MM's will be well below the Bid and much higher on the ask than most.
That generally indicates they are not active in the stock.
Those who are active however have set their parameters and generally monitor the prices.
Occasionally one will not be paying attention and will not lower their bid and ask as they see other MM's dropping the price. They have set their automated buys and sells.
The other MM's have dropped the bid to what the first MM was willing to pay and they will essentially be selling as many shares as they are willing to the MM highest on the bid.
They are happy because a MM is willing to pay what they are willing to sell for.
When the high bid MM finally wakes up and sees what is going on they drop their bid also.
There are other occasions however when the high bidder is extremely motivated to accumulate either because they are covering a short position or one of their clients has a large limit order buy at the MM's current bid.
They will not close that position until they are done accumulating even if other MM's are pressuring them to drop the price.
Eventually either the accumulater or the selling MMs on the ask break and raise the ask.
It will always happen eventually.
If another MM becomes motivated and joins the bid it put pressure on the selling MM to raise the ask.
If more MM's join the ask side the accumulating MM is being forced to drop their bid.
It will always correct either up or down eventually but large orders, covering and shorting will have a lot to do with active MM positions.
there is a bit more to it than that but that will give you a general idea of why the bid and ask can be the same and why the bid could even be higher than the ask as I saw here earlier this week.
Hope that helped a bit.
eye
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