Replies to post #67716 on Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[BennySlots]

Nice posts and links guys! Fannie and Freddie seem to me to be quite obviously heavily influenced by HFT/Algo trading.

I see this as both a blessing and a curse to us mere mortals. On the one hand, the OTC and/or HFT makes getting an order filled stressful at times. Like today, I placed an order a couple 2~3 minutes before close at the ASK price. Luckily, it finally did get filled, but I didn't get notified until like 30 seconds AFTER the close. And on the big crash/bounce of this last run, I lost out on ~20% because my sell near the top of the first bounce didn't go through and I cancelled and waited until the 2nd bounce. Hard to say if that's all HFTs fault. The OTC itself seems a bit sketchy.

On the plus side, this stock has some movements that are extremely predictable. And we can use that to our advantage. I don't know if this advantage will last forever. Most likely the trading algorithms will eventually evolve to become less predictable. But at least currently, you can bank on things like this stock making a huge spike up, then a huge crash and a huge bounce every so often. Seems to happen like clockwork.

It's like ants at a picnic. We may not be able to BBQ, but if we know where the food ends up we can still feast like kings ;-)

[~ NT ~]

Aha . . I have a few questions regarding this.

I have heard before that in Forex trading there are discrepancies about price transparency.

BUT, in stocks (separately OTC and the big boards), is what we see on L2 correct ? Is what we see a little different OR say a little late (latency in play here) ?

Not that much of a problem for a ticker like FNMA which moves so much and is quite predictable BUT would be a deal breaker for daytraders playing tickers that move very little