10bagger: You have a lot more experience in this area than I do, however nowadays many orders are internalized within firms. For example I have often placed orders with Schwab between bid and ask and get almost instant fills. Schwab publicly agrees with what you say and will always tell me that someone picks up the phone and makes a call on OTCBB stocks, but it is not possible to do so in 15 seconds from the time I placed the order, to its execution. Therefore I know that the order system has orders sitting to be matched up internally by computer.
Each time you see a bid or offer less in shares or price than your order on the books and you get a fill a human has gotten between you and the book
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