Larrybaz - True quote sizes
All this electronic trading came about after my day's in the biz. However, your scenarios seem real. If a MM shows a size of 100 shares and sells them, then the offer should move. You will often see an offer of 2.10 for example and see a load of stock go for 2.099. That I assume is when the MM has a load of stock for sale but does not want to lift the offer. Technically speaking, they could not trade those shares from their own account @ 2.10, as that would be Front Running... illegal practice, but selling them at 2.0999 must be legit. So many scenario's for them to win the game, best not to try and out trade them. Watch when you put an offer out undercutting the current offer by $.01 and almost at the same time it hits, ARCA or someother ECN will jump below you by a penny for 100 shares... that must be some programmed way to protect order flow. I wish I knew how it works, but it most likely would not help us anyway.
Some of those NASDAQ small cap stocks drive me crazy with the constantly changing quotes and almost no trading.
Signatures are so yesterday!
