TA discussion, page-5036

Some informative responses to a search on 'placeholder trade'. Price management? Surely not.

DEFINITION of ‘Stub Quote’
Order placed well off a stock's market price. Stub quotes are used by trading firms when the firm doesn't want to trade at certain prices and wants to pull away to ensure no trades occur. In order to make this happen, the firm will offer quotes that are out of bounds. A stub quote also serves as a safety net in that if a market maker doesn't have enough liquidity available to trade a stock near its recent price range, then a stub quote is entered so that the market maker complies with its requirements without extending its quotes beyond its available liquidity.


A stub quote is also referred to as a "placeholder" quote because this absurdly priced transaction would never be reached.


DEFINITION of ‘Fictitious Trade’
1) A trade that is booked with an execution date far in the future, and is adjusted to include the correct settlement and trade date when the transaction is completed. A fictitious trade is used in the processing of a securities transaction as a form of placeholder, and is found when open dates or rates are being used.


2) A securities order used to affect the price of a security, but which does not result in shares being competitively bid for and no real change in ownership. Wash sales and matched orders are a type of fictitious trade. A fictitious trade is designed to give the impression that the market is moving in a certain direction, when in fact it is being manipulated by a broker.