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have heard that the New York Stock Exchange is saving the symbols "M" and "I" for Microsoft and Intel, respectively. So far, the management of both these issuers have been watching all-time highs in their stock prices and have no reason to flee the Nasdaq market.
Direct Access Electronic Trading is becoming more and more accepted and now constitutes a mainstream way of doing business. The old-line thinking was that electronic day traders were an aberration. Actually, DAET represents the future, and the current market-making environment is the true dinosaur. The market makers refuse to acknowledge that they are already being swept into the vortex of a dramatically accelerated evolution that will make the unadaptable extinct.
An electronic central market is obviously the way of the future unless you are deaf to the realities heralded by the new Order Handling Rules. A primary reality is the creation of many new trading facilities designed to accommodate public order flow and display public prices through ECNs. ECNs are being created to allow the public dissemination of limit orders which will interact with the current market-maker-dominated Nasdaq system. A customer limit order that is better than the market maker's quotation will be publicly displayed for all to see and thereby have a much higher probability of being executed than under the old procedures, when it would be hidden on the market maker's book. Market makers can no longer ignore public orders priced between the spread.
New Order Handling Rules Help Traders
Day trading now includes trading on ECNs. I am talking about customer limit orders representing a better price than the national best bid or offer, which must be accepted by the market maker or delivered to the ECN for display. Accordingly, any order on an ECN could constitute a better price (or size) than the dealer quotes. Your trading system should hunt the ECNs and harvest these improved prices.

 
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