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Sorry for upping old thread, but could you please clarify:
what is the benefit of MM to land iceberg with 1 display and 1 reserve contract instead of just usual order with volume 2?
Possible reason I can imagine, that MM does not want fast fill of his order, and after 1 contract has been filled, order goes to the end of queue allowing MM order presence in price level and giving time to cancel it
I know this is old… But some of the things posted here are flat out wring re: icebergs. People need to know that icebergs are usually always right (you just don’t understand why). You don’t have to agree, but then you’d be wrong.
1) Icebergs are indeed usually the smart money.
This is a fact. And they are usually always right. How? Because you don’t know what they are doing - but we have learned to guess what they are doing by knowing the game. Because it is a game. It’s not random. Those using icebergs are right because they make themselves right. Do you think that they simply absorb and then sit? Lol. No. They blast orders in their direction and pull their phony bids and offers driving the dumb money to jump onboard. And this is where you need to enter - with the iceberg - at its price(s) hopefully. But then guess what? They need to exit. And they don’t use market orders (they are for suckers), and they don’t want to loose ticks (who does), so they execute another iceberg - and this is here you fade the iceberg - if there’s some other player looking to drive the market still higher (or lower) - because their iceberg is an exit. They key is knowing when to trade with it or against it, or to not trade at all. They aren’t market makers lol. Not a chance.
When they are losing, guess what they do? They’ll dump everything plus double their last iceberg into the market, and profit. They don’t lose lol. This is a game. I know many people friends of mine from the merc, these guys knew nothing of fancy things like charts and icebergs - they saw the icebergs in person. They indeed traded WITH the paper. I do too, when paper is initiating a position, I’m with the paper. If it is a loser, I’m out (and they, like I said, with blast the market and win - ask Baldwin how that works).
2) It’s easy to spot an iceberg.
This is false. Believe me, sometimes it’s not an iceberg but smaller traders absorbing. Generally it’s only when you see ticking in the direction of the iceberg, pulling the orders, letting it go bid/offer, then taking then out, that it’s a true iceberg i’d want to trade with. Bookmap allows me now to confirm this (honestly that’s all I’m using bookmap for at this point because I’m a ladder trader).
Again, what you think is an iceberg isn’t always an ice berg. That is a fact. Bookmap though, for me, helps me determine that for sure now.
3) All markets aren’t the same.
I don’t touch the S&P. I did, and it was disaster lol. Starts off well usually lol. My friends were responsible for most of the volume in the S&P pit, and they made their many millions not looking at charts and nonsense. They traded the edge. The edge is useless in the minis. Useless. Unless you are Goldman’s HFT maybe, but they don’t always win. This guy was (and still is) trying to show you how to approach these markets. Bookmap looks to be a big help to identify when to get in on a move, icebergs, stops, absorption, etc.
There are markets you can still trade the edge, but you need to be fast and trade with the guys who control the market. The guys who decide direction.
4) Bookmap and MBO is amazing. Jigsaw is amazing. For a retail trader. Without both of them, it would be a lot tougher. Without them I’d have many losing days instead of a few a month. Losing isn’t a good thing.
TT is amazing for crushing the hopes and dreams of retail traders, for paper and big players. Amazing.
Whether or not icebergs are easy to spot or not, the effect is the same. Icebergs or absorption, it's all the same to most people - price stops in it's tracks. Here's a good video by an institutional trader that explains it a lot better.
Your assertion that icebergs are not easy to spot, and you need specialized software and lots of experience is simply not true.
Larger traders, yes. They are smart? Is it meaningful?
Not to disappoint anybody, but I'm monitoring closely action around option dealers hedging levels. Those guys often use icebergs to execute their hedges.
Are they smart? OK, let's say they are smart. And they have deltas to hedge, sometimes a lot. Big money for sure.
Now we get very excited, smart guys, executing big money orders, that's fantastic to know!
Unless it means absolutely nothing in terms of further price action. They have their job to do to hedge their own risk taken from options market where they trade market-neutral.
They do their job and leave the market until next hedging level.
Good luck figuring out future action based upon a fact that you've seen their smart-money-super-secret-iceberg-stuff
Good luck even more to figure out what icebergs are executed by those guys and what by other types of market participants.
The stop order tracker tool isn't a guaranteed benefit. That is a somewhat shady sales pitch. I'm not knocking the MBO data or saying that seeing individual order sizes isn't helpful. It may has advantages to that depending on your strategies. But a stop order is always going to be a market order which triggers at the next price. The question is, is it a stop from from someone entering or exiting? That's the intuition part and what you are anticipating. Plus, you are trying to anticipate and act before those stops hit...not after they've hit and the data tells you there were stop orders You already know they're stop orders. The idea is you get paid when they hit if you're already in the trade.
Understanding that stop orders are being triggered is certainly a part of the game but don't get lost in that information. In addition, an iceberg can be comprised of several orders which don't always execute immediately. So there may be a refreshing order of 2000 on the bid which is the actual 'iceberg'. But then the same buyer may wait till sell orders stack there again before hitting them with another 2000. That's not technically an iceberg but it is the same guy moving size at the same price so end result is the same and you can see that on Jigsaw. By the way, you can have similar tools with MBO data using EdgeproX, and cheeper.
And, Scott, if you are paid by Bookmap you are selling a product. And when you say you are tired of some people of this community, Bookmap and you are being rude to us.
Amazing how much flack this guy has got from people who largely seem to be upset that they don't think he is being respectful enough of their trading ability or knowledge. Pretty sure nobody else here has been profiled in a Steenbarger trading book, made a $M in a year or has been trading as long as he has. Presumably he still makes decent money trading considering how well he has done in the past.
Sure he came across as a bit arrogant in his early posts, but he has a lot more experience and history of success than the vast majority here.
The only reason I come to this forum is to learn something and get ideas from people who are much better at trading than I am. It's a shame looking at his profile that he only spent a couple of weeks here, and hasn't posted in almost a year, before clearly deciding it was a waste of his time. (I'm not either a current Bookmap user or a subscriber of his services).
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
Sorry to chime in randomly, but I have seen webinars of Bookmap developers getting stopped out themselves using their own Bookmap.
Of course there might be an edge in Bookmap, but what will people (like me who are 'prospective customers') think of them if they themselves get stopped out during a live webinar?
I think you should think. Wow these people are for real. Showing stop outs. We all know that it is part of the game. Of course I want a system that doesn’t have losses or very small ones and many more bigger winners. If they could show you that- that is golden. But just my opinion