Tape Factiod of the Day

You know, there's a lot of stuff I know (about) that I never have really understood.

But one thing about it all is that the Exchanges, FINRA, and SEC make rules to the advantage of the big boys, aka the Club.

When the bid and ask are one cent apart, have you ever entered a trade order for the halfway point, ie, x.yy5? I can't, tried and got "not accepted." But the Club does it all day long...and not just with OPK.

But then we have some whitebread choices for our orders, while the Club has a universe of possible orders such as "Hide not Slide." It's not what you'd call a "level playing field."

Then, back around 2000, they switched from fractions trading where, for retail, trading orders were 1/8th, rarely 1/16th, of a dollar, and the Club could do 1/32nd. In terms of spread, 1/8th equates to $0.125, so a bid would be that much different from the ask. That made stock movements more aggressive than this decimal crap of 1 ten thousandths of a dollar. Which brings us to shorting.

Since the fractions spreads made long positions move higher, faster, it also made shorting more perilous. In addition to decimal trading, the uptick rule was "modified."

Previously, a short sale could only be made on an uptick (a move of at least $0.0625 but more commonly $0.125). And short sales were made at the ask. With the change to decimal trading, the uptick rule was only activated when a stock moved down more than 10% in a day. Only then was short selling restricted (R) to on an uptick. But now an uptick is only $0.0001.

It should be obvious these changes were made to benefit the Club.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

If you had to guess, what do you think they're doing?

I purchase partial shares all the time. Instead of putting in # of shares to purchase, I put in the total $x.x amount and it will buy how many shares fit into that amount and will typically include a total share count down to the thousand; I.e.., total purchased shares: 1,234.567 shares.

Edit: in addition, when I sell that lot, it will now have a partial share count injected back into the exchange.

I primarily trade on Fidelity but I also trade a little on RH as well.

On Fidelity, I was able to successfully place a trade for partial share count of 12.65 shares. It would let me go to the thousandths but no further.

Did not use the $ amount approach.