very quiet on h/c, page-18

re: very quiet on h/c/meerkat The advantage of such a bid is that you are guranteed to get your order filled at the open price...

If you are not careful however, you can actually cause the opening bid to be over-inflated, especially if a few smart cookies adjust their sell orders to take advantge of any overlaping volumes...the same goes if you are selling.

It is best only peformed on high volume stocks.

I remember once (about 7 years ago), seeing something like a $2 bid to buy 10,000 shares in one particular stock during the morning match-up, when the prevailing price was about 20c...there were over 100K sellers at 21c, so it appeared his order would be filled at that price.

Just before the open however, one smart cookie quickly placed a sell order for the exact same amount of shares at 20c and managed achieved a $1.10 match-up.

What the???

After the close out, the other bids were left at 19c on the buy and 21c on the sell...but because there were no overlaps in the match-up volumes, the price was worked out as an average of the two from the last price.

Due to this loophole, I think it is worked out differently now, with reference made to the bids on either side of the ledger....such a match up now would go through at 20c.

Cheers!