A few trades this week have moved against me when antcipating a direction and dropping e.g. £100 stake into the market which got me thinking what actually happens when other people or algorithums see this type of activity.
I know £100 isn't massive but for these trades in particular, even though it wasn't more than the money waiting, it probably was one of the bigger single orders entering the market at that particular moment, and so I imagine stood out to more experienced eyes or automation.
An example of one of these trades was price stuck around 4.0 for several minutes on a favourite, looking very indecisive, and so waited for some price movement on the 2nd fav. and time/liquidity to reach optimum levels. Seeing the 2nd fav start to move higher I anticipated the price to break lower on the fav, and so dropped £100 @3.95. The nano second the order hit the market it was taken with several hundred more waiting above my entry, and price quickly moved to @4.5. I initially thought its just someone on the other side dropping a larger order in at the same time with the opposing view. However, as this has happened a few times now Im starting to think maybe its not just a coincidence.
Around 2mins before the off, backing came for the fav and price broke 4.0 as I initially thought it would, and was able to get a second crack at it which enabled me the hedge for a small profit.
So can someone please explain what might be happening here? Is it human intervention or more likely to be automation... or both? Are they seeing a larger than avg order being dumped into the market and immediately taking a larger counter order to take out yours, and other waiting orders in the opposit direction, with the aim of profiting from traders panic exits/awating stop orders?
I guess this is also why its always better to scale in and out of trade, undetected.
TIA
