@MarindaVannoy1 Probably somewhere in Honolulu or Scottsdale. Portland would be my 3rd like west coast wise. Sorry California! If you’re just regarding fresh and flavors. New Orleans first above all
In small caps, you’re not trading investors. You’re trading market makers — Citadel Securities, Virtu, Jane Street. They quote prices on every exchange, collect the spread on every trade, and don’t care if the stock goes up or down. Citadel alone handles about a quarter of all US stock volume.
Here’s what that means. Your order is a signal. In a thin book — where maybe five orders exist and yours is half the market — that signal is enough. The algo sees a market order instead of a limit order and reads it as urgency. Buy, and they sell into your bid before your fill completes. Your ten shares don’t move price. They reveal intent.
Stop hunts aren’t a conspiracy. When price dips to where a cluster of stops sits, all those sells fire at once, and the market maker is right there filling them. It’s not personal. It’s just them doing their job at the moment everyone’s forced to sell.
Buying is a bet on direction — but the skill isn’t the prediction. It’s surviving the ones that miss.
The order book is every buy and sell order waiting to fill. A deep book means your trade is one drop in a bucket. A thin book means you’re the market — one buy can jump the price a percent, spreads go wide, slippage gets brutal.
Retail’s only edge is patience and size. Patience means waiting for a deep book where your order disappears in the noise. Size means even if they fade you, the loss is a rounding error, not a hole you dig out of. Algos can’t wait. They have to trade now. You can sit on your hands.
That’s the whole game. Not predicting direction. Losing small enough to still be standing when you’re wrong.
@QueenAnticommie Yeah haven’t had power since 4:30 and drive up to Dothan Al which is seeing remnants. I start call on Sunday for work so have to get back to Destin pretty quick once it’s all over with. But I’m good. I’m a prepper and was ready for it