Nanex Research

Nanex ~ 10-Dec-2012 ~ Wide Spreads Make Wild Trades

Wide spreads in the opening seconds (sometimes minutes) in hundreds of stocks lead to the appearance of wild trades. Most of the time these are the result of a poorly chosen market order, but sometimes these trades could be part of a deliberate attempt by someone wishing to spook or spark interest in a stock. We picked 4 examples out of dozens that occur every day.

In the charts below, trades are color coded by exchange. The gray shading is the National Best Bid/Offer Spread (top is best ask, bottom is best bid)

1. DLPH - Trades range from $37.90 to $34.04

2. DNI - Premarket trades just 5 seconds before opening range from $21.39 to $14.92 !

3. EIX - Trades range from $44.84 to $42.57 in a 1 second period.

4. RKT - Trades range from 62.05 to $64.84

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