Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

If you know what you're doing, Cyners, you don't need Level 2 (or any other dom data for that matter). And, if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it anyway.

It was good for spotting shifty MMs at 100 paces when everything outside the 100 went through SEAQ, but the advent of SETSmm just gave the MMs a veil of secrecy to hide behind.

?????????????????????
how else do you get live prices, especially for individual shares?

You use something called experience.

LOL hils, good answer!

Cyners I meant Money am prices.

Yes Cynic you listen to Hils or she'l thrash your bottom.

Yuk.

Thrash thrash thrash thrash.

Anyway got my system back up and working after 7 days down. The data engineer said some kind of corruption had stopped it from spitting out the results.

Mind having said that Ive made a killing without it anyway.

Yes experience, Hils is right.

experience is no f'ing good if you are looking to buy or sell a specific share at best price

That's what orders are for cyners, get a grip.

It sounds like you need Level 3, Cyners. Why don't you ask Mikey nicely if he'll show you how it works?

He is, trouble is the grip is on a pint glass according to the footsie thread -):

i'm very happy dabbling as i do but thank you :-)

That is a funny name to give it!

it has to be admitted that one dabbles with one's dibber from time to time
you should try it some time if not too late for you

Too late.

The only surprise I seem to have left, is finding it before it is too late.

I empathise with John Mortimer more and more.

Ohhhhhhhhhh cynic you get the daily chart or if you can be arsed the hourly chart or lower, and time your entry that way.

And entry is no way the be all and end all of managing a trade.

Even a winker like you must know that.

i generally use the 10 minute chart when playing with indices, but prefer to see a fuller picture (L2 live prices) if considering buying or selling an indidual stock

the former are often quite short term holds, whereas the latter are likley to be for much longer

Cyners,

I intend to say this only once, because it's Xmas. The problem with Level 2 when it comes to any sets stock is that there are too many bots playing the book to make Level 2 meaningful in any way whatsoever.

If I wanted to sell a million shares in XYZ Co, I wouldn't just stick them straight on the offer, no matter how heavily traded XYZ Co is. Firstly, I'd drum up a bit of interest by putting a sheep bot for, say, 100k shares at a point or two under the bid. This would give the illusion that there's a buyer in the market, prompting other buyers to come in on the bid, in front of my sheep bot. I'd program my sheep bot so that it stayed permanently a point or two under the bid, but never got hit itself, because I'm a seller rather than a buyer.

Alors, if the presence of my sheep bot caused the price to rise enough such that the bid hit the price at which I was looking to sell, I'd have another bot programmed and ready to take the bid, in whatever quantity up to the 1m I was looking to sell. That bot would be running on a server next door to the exchange's servers with fibre optic cables connecting the two servers, giving next to zero latency and beating every other Tom, Dick or Harry to market. Basically, that's what the big boys do, and if you can't beat 'em, you may as well join 'em.

In addition, I'd put another bot on the right hand side which dripped in 25k slugs at my sell price. As soon as one slug got hit, it'd be replaced with another sell order before you could say Jack Robinson.

All the time, I'd keep my sheep bot on the left hand side, a point or two under the bid, giving the false impression that the book was weighted in favour of buyers. Anyone looking at the VWAP would be tempted to come in as a buyer and, hopefully, take the other side of my trade. And, as soon as my large sell order got filled, I'd pull the sheep bot and allow the price to fall.

Geddit now? Because that's why Level 2 is the Fool's Gold of retail punters.