December 14, 2015
From my experience HFT traders have made the sale and purchase of securities a challenging game. For example I place a trade for 1,000 shares of NSC at the current bid. Moments later the shares are bid up by a few cents and the offer (at a higher price) has more shares available. Perhaps this is a coincidence but I have seen it too often with other securities to believe that. In my estimation the computer algo believes I have a much larger order that I would like to get filled and is looking make it a bit more expensive. I don't change my price and after 5 minutes get filled.