[stephenNUTS]

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I work in the order room for a large online broker. It's my experience that specialists are a bunch of scam artists. It's also my opinion that stop orders at any time and market orders at the open are for complete suckers.

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You are correct..and thats why I added the "lol" after my specialist comment above. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

In fact a few years back,there were almost 30 specialist firms.After a big price fixing/front running scandel (sending many to jail)...the smaller firms were bought out/merged with the bigger ones.

There was SOOO much BS going on it wasnt even funny.There still is the "ole' boys club" down,there but its not as blatant as before ,with the advent of electronic trading,as well as more oversight added on the floor.

As far as stop orders...I NEVER use them unless I was going to be away from my computers or by by myself,and that was very rare.

The MM's,specialists ...and in recent years the hedge funds,make a TON of money taking/cleaning out stops,and bringing the stock right back to its recent level.

IMO.....thats the BIGGEST scam of late and very tough to police also...mainly to the fact a small market SELL order in an illiquid stock,can trigger a ton of stops on the way down(usually at simple even numbers at certain obvious moving averages)...and then they quickly come in on the BID side to bring it back up and support it.Its also done on stocks on the way UP with huge short positions...driving the stock higher and higher on the sheer mechanics of the market alone from an induced short squeeze

Its a [censored] joke!

One of my BIGGEST recomendations to new investors...is to make sure a stock has a fairly tight bid/ask....and be liquid enough to sell at any given time,without much trouble or inducing a loss due to the large spread.

SF [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]