DISPLAYING NASDAQ LEVEL II DATA

Transcription

1 14 NASDAQ LEVEL II windows et you view Leve II data for NAS- DAQ stocks. Figure 14-1 is an exampe of a NASDAQ Leve II window. Figure NASDAQ Leve II Window Exampe Information in Leve II windows is dispayed by Market Maker ID. Market Makers are firms that buy and se stocks that they choose to represent. Each Market Maker esigna 14-1

2 competes for business from traders by dispaying bid and ask quotations for a guaranteed number of shares. Once a Market Maker receives an order, the firm either competes the transaction from its own inventory or eectronicay searches for avaiabe shares to buy or se. Because a these transactions occur eectronicay, trades can be competed very quicky. There are over 500 Market Maker firms. Each is identified by a four-etter abbreviation. If you want to know who the Market Makers are, you can go to on the Internet to see a ist of the names and contact information for Market Makers. You can downoad a text fie with the information or search directy from the web site. Anatomy of a Leve II Window A Leve II window dispays data for a specified issue in a tabuar form. The tabe can be sorted based on a number of criteria. Figure 14-2 identifies the basic eements of a Leve II window. Toobar Leve I quote Market indicator bar Ticker Leve II quotes Figure Leve II Window Eements 14-2 esigna

3 Toobar The Leve II toobar contains the foowing eements: Symbo Fied Identifies the issue for which data is dispayed. The Link toobar grabs the symbo you entered in the main esigna toobar and appies it to the active Leve II window. Sort Fied Specifies the sort option appied to the Leve II quotes. Opens the Leve II Properties diaog box so that you can edit window options. Opens and coses a specia vertica ticker area in the window. Togges between dispaying or not dispaying Leve I quote data at the top of the Leve II window Status Shows the status of your server connection. Leve II data is maintained on a specia server operated by esigna. Normay, the indicator is green and reads OK. If there is no connection to the server, the indicator is red and reads NO NL2. This occurs if the Data Manager isn't running, if you don't have an Internet connection, or if there is a probem connecting with the server. Leve I Quotes A Leve I quote incudes the symbo, ast, bid, ask, cumuative voume, and trade time. The quote data is continuousy updated as changes occur. esigna 14-3

4 Market Indicator Leve II Quotes The Market Indicator is a horizonta coor bar at the top of the window that you can togge on or off. Depending on how you set it up, it represents either the number of market makers at the various price eves or the size of the bid/ask at various prices. Leve II data appears in the main part of the window. Each Leve II quote incudes the Market Maker ID (MMID) and time. Bid, bid size, ask, and ask size data dispay depending on the current sort option for the window. The etter c after the MMID indicates that the market is cosed. The etter p indicates that this is a primary Market Maker for the stock. The background coors for the data rows change to highight the best bid and ask quotes. The defaut coors and their meaning are as foows: Yeow signifies the highest bid or owest ask quote (Inside Market). Green signifies the next best quote (1st Outer). Bue signifies the second best quote (2nd Outer). Red signifies the third best quote (3rd Outer). White signifies other data. Dispaying Leve II & Market Maker Data You can choose to dispay a ticker that shows each NASDAQ trade and net change on the day for the symbo. The data scros verticay in the right part of the Leve II window. Cicking the icon on the toobar togges the Ticker on and off. You can aso view NASDAQ Leve II market maker activity within a scroing ticker that features coor-coded bid/ask changes (as shown in Figure 14-3). When you dispay trade or bid/ask prices in a ticker, you can aso choose to dispay market maker 14-4 esigna

5 information. For a symbos seected for the Ticker window, market maker data wi be dispayed aong with the Market Maker ID (MMID). You can choose to dispay bid-ony data, ask-ony data, or both. You can aso choose to view updates for ony one seected market maker. Figure NASDAQ Leve II Market Maker Activity Ticker To activate a Leve II Market Maker Activity Ticker (MMAT), seect the Market Maker checkbox in the Ticker window options diaog box, then, cick the Symbos button, enter your desired settings in the MMAT Options diaog box, then cick OK to appy your settings. esigna 14-5

6 Choosing a Leve II Symbo You can open a Leve II window by right-cicking a NASDAQ symbo in a Quote, Summary or Portfoio window and choosing NASDAQ Leve II from the pop-up menu. Each time you use the right-cick method, you open a new Leve II window. If you want to use the same window to track mutipe issues, you need to enter symbos directy into the symbo fied of an open Leve II window. Each symbo you enter is saved so that you can access it quicky from the Symbo fied pu-down menu. The symbos you enter are saved in the ist. You can edit the symbos in the ist by seecting Edit Symbo List (At-O,L) from the Leve II Options menu. You can change how the data is sorted by seecting a different sorting scheme from the Sort fied pu-down ist in the toobar. You can choose from four sorting methods: Best Market. Best Market dispays quote information in descending order from best to worst. Bid quotes appear on the eft, and ask quotes appear on the right. Best Bid. Best Bid dispays Market Maker quotes in order based on the bid price. Best Ask. Best Ask dispays Market Maker quotes in order based on the ask price. Dispaying the Ticker Aphabetica. Aphabetica sorts quotes aphabeticay by the MMID. A MMID foowed by a owercase etter p denotes a primary Market Maker. You can eect to dispay tick data for the symbo you are tracking. The icon in the toobar togges a specia ticker on and off. When the ticker is turned on, tick data appears in a verticay scroing subwindow to the right of the main data area esigna

7 Setting Properties (Depending on the size of the window, a scro bar may appear beow the main data to aow you to see both the data area and the ticker.) By defaut, up-tick data is shown in green; down tick data is shown in red. You can use the Properties diaog box to configure the information dispayed in a Leve II window. Here s what you can do in the Properties diaog box: Save the current Leve II window setup as the defaut for future Leve II windows. Set the ticker properties. Dispay a coor-coded market indicator bar at the top of the window that represents the number of Market Makers at the various price eves or the size of the bid/ask at various prices. esigna 14-7

8 To open the Properties diaog box 1 Cick the Leve II Properties button in the toobar or choose Properties from the Leve II Options menu (At-O, P). The Properties diaog box appears dispaying the current Leve II window settings. 2 There are a number of options for configuring the ticker. Cick the Trade checkbox to dispay eve I trades, or cick the MM Quote checkbox to dispay eve II quotes, or cick both to dispay both. If you choose to dispay eve II quotes, you can use the checkboxes to dispay a quotes or just those for a specific Market Maker. You can aso specify bid or ask quotes or both. You can choose to dispay the time for ticker updates. Cick the Market Indicator checkbox to dispay a horizonta coor bar at the top of the window. 3 Cick the Number of Market Makers button to dispay a representation of the number of Market Makers at various price eves, or cick the Size of Bid/Ask button to dispay a representation of the size of the bid/ask at various price eves esigna

9 4 Cick Save Defauts to save the settings you have changed as defauts for new windows. 5 When you re finished making changes, cick OK to execute them. Support for After-Hours Trading esigna ets you view premarket and after-hours Form-T trades on the NASDAQ exchange. In the Quote and Summary windows, Form-T trade voumes wi update, but, because of NASD requirements, session-specific information such as Last and OHLC (Open High Low Cose) wi not change. There wi be a coor fash with each update. Form-T prices appear on charts and aso in the Quote window if the Quote window has been set up to incude the Form-T session change,% Change, and Last/ Form-T fieds. Form-T trades are aso dispayed in esigna Time & Saes window. The word Form- T appears to the right of every Form-T trade. Form-T trades aso appear in Tick and Interva charts. Form-T trades are preset to appear in the same coors as reguar trades, but you can change the coors if you ike esigna 14-9

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