Hello,
I'm somewhat new to trading and I'm looking for software that can take streaming real time bid and ask prices from my online broker and chart them together on a real time graph. Does anyone here know of software that can do that?
Any help is greatly appreciated. I've been searching the internet for a while now and I can't find anything.
PT
pt_emini
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Posts: 1,940
quote:
Originally posted by Nerck
I'm tracking this pennystock and Ameritrade quotes the bid price at .78 and ask at .87 although the current price is quoted at .39. Do you have any idea why the current price wouldn't be within the range of bid and ask prices?
In your example, 0.39 is not the current price, it is the last trade price, which could have occurred some hours in the past. The current price is actually the current bid and ask being quoted.
To explain what likely happened in this case.... Ameritrade will quote the best bid/ask prices currently available from the exchanges it provides access to. In this case, most likely there was one trade at the unusual price of 0.39 routed to a different exchange than the exchange(s) with the best bid/ask. This is relatively common occurance with thin stocks. Trades outside the best price are crossed in the last minute of trading or immediately following the close in a single after-hours trade. This phenomenon in thin stocks often has to do with needing to find liquidity for a block trade, say 50,000 shares, where the best bid/ask is showing only 100x100 shares of depth. Thus, for example in this case, a large seller found someone (usually a broker or market maker) willing to take the entire block at 0.39 in a single transaction. To verify this theory, you would need to look at the trade history and see the trade size and exchange used for that specific 0.39 print.