How can you tell what's a buy or sell order going through? Are you referring to level II? I usually glance at the ongoing share transactions going through but that data alone doesn't really make it clear which transactions are sells and which are buys. I mean...yes they are colored red and green. Simplistically, a red transaction of 500 shares at $2.25 is supposedly someone selling 500 shares at that price. But the buyer is whom, exactly? Correct me if I'm wrong but we don't know from any data i'm aware of whether the Market Makers are the buyer of those 500 shares or if an investor is the buyer. Or if it's a bit of each. If we're seeing large sell orders (i did today), and if the Market Makers were doing the buying, then they've now accumulated a large inventory of FNMA. How long do they typically hold such inventory? If it was Market Makers doing most of the buying, then wouldn't it make sense that they'd need an approx 20 cent rise in pps to be able to sell all that inventory for a profit? And if it was individual investors and institutions buying, there's no telling what will happen to pps in the near term. And if it was largely institutions selling and buying, a lot of that transacting could've been done in dark pools and we'd not really see them at all! I'm really not sure the question of whether a transaction was really a sell or a buy (or both) always has a clear answer. Please let me know what I'm missing.
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