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14/04/20
14:36
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Originally posted by BobF:
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I've had concerns several times about the way the details of depth of trading is not visible to people trading on Commsec and similar platforms. I trade from NZ using Direct Broking, owned (now) by Jarden & Co. I see exactly the same things on the depths as JWB says he sees, and I came to similar conclusions, and had also independently heard the same stories re ultrafast trading outfits with direct real-time access to the market. Last week on the day of the announcement I bought some more AKP at 950 (I just couldn't help myself!) The initial ask price was down around 900 and my bid at 950 was one of the first trades that should have gone through. But it never appeared as a confirmed buy/order, and I ended up waiting several hours and made a number of enquiries to DB before I saw it come through. DB told me that there were several trades all around the same time (just post the announcement) and all were queued. Eventually (end of day!) it came through and it was at 950, even though from my observation of the depth display it ought to have been at the initial 900 price. On another previous occasion I had moaned to DB that my selling of CPV, just before it nose-dived, took seemingly forever to appear, and should also have gone through at a higher price that it eventually did. DB then showed me screenshots of what their trading desk operators could see, and there were indeed lots of trades that were on their screen along with mine, all ranked in priority of time of lodgement and price, that I could not see, and which never appeared on the depth, even though I was watching the page and refreshing it repeatedly. This is all the problem of dealing via a trading bureau like many of us do. What you see is not necessarily what is actually happening in real time, and this gives the distinct impression that what happens behind the scenes is not really "fair market dealings". Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But them's the breaks. However, hopefully, pretty soon we will hear news that we will all like! GLTAH!
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The slow processing of orders when there's unusually high market activity is so frustrating. One of my backup brokers takes up to 15 minutes to show whether a trade has gone through, which seems like lightspeed compared to yours.. Also, it's difficult to ascertain what's happening at the best of times, but if you're not using dynamic data updates (i.e. you don't have to refresh your webpage) you'll miss a fair bit. The course of trades data is generally accurate however.