Deathtotaxes - True quote sizes
I found the posts regarding the reliability of the quote sizes interesting. I never look upon the share size in a quote as anything more than the bare minimum the MM has available at that price.
Since you are the resident expert in this area, maybe you could share some of your knowledge with the board. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of this subject.
Here's a scenario:
On a nasdaq traded stock, NITE is alone at the offer price and is showing a size of 100 shares (shown as 1 in the quote). Now what are some of the possible reasons why that offer of 100 shares would not be taken out after thousands of shares were traded at that price? Here are a couple of my interpretations of why:
1. NITE is not showing true size, and actually has 50k shares they are trying to unload at that price.
2. Buy orders come into other MMs (other than NITE) and they execute orders at the current offer price out of their own inventories.
Or on the AMEX:
An order is executed by a broker/dealer making a market in that AMEX listed stock and not by the AMEX specialist thus not affecting his quote.
I know there must be other reasons why a quote would not change. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
By the way, I did a little research into the MM designation SIZE a few months ago. It's funny, because it was one of those situations where the bid or offer just wouldn't budge, and SIZE was camped out on it. You gotta love it.
Larrybaz
Many huge winners will be found here among the micro-caps. You probably have one in your portfolio right now. There will be many seemingly good reasons to sell it too early.......
