December 11, 2010
For direct evidence of what happens because of flash traders, consider what happened to me on Monday, 12-6-10. I am attaching a chart that shows what happened. I was trading TXN that morning and happened to leave a short order in at 32.98. If you look at the attached chart, at 11:19 a trade went off which caused the big red bar you see there. Take three guesses what the print was. Would you believe 32.9799? I sure never saw a fill, of course. The only reason the trade went off was that I was willing to provide liquidity at that price. My reward for offering to provide that liquidity was to be used as a patsy by a flash trader. Proof once again that liquidity providers can't leave orders sitting out there. They are simply used by flash traders and are not rewarded for taking the risk of providing liquidity.