That's interesting about the TICK. I woudl have thought back during the bubble days of 99 you would have seen more days with high TICK readings. It just occured to me though, that was back before decimilization. Probably these days if the market is leaning in one direction, it's not that hard to get stocks to move at least a penny, where as you use to have to get them to move a 16th. I've only been watching it in real time for a little more than 6 months, but I tend to use it as an indicator on how hard "they" are pushing. To get those 1000+ TICKs, you tend to see a lot of jamming in the key index stocks, along with the futures, and the PREM a lot of times hits buy levels to kick in program trading.
Yesterday the TICK was pretty much the tale of the tape. We didn't manage to get a 400+ TICK until 2:35. Interestingly the LOD on the TICK was at 2:15, and looks to have been about -800ish. That coincided with the PREM hitting sell levels. The HOD on the TICK was at 3:10 at just over 800+, and coincided with a spike up in the PREM, but short of buy levels. Almost like as long as not much was happening, "they" were content to leave things be, but at the first sign of a possible sell off, moved into do a little bit of mild propping.
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