Some oddities in order books.

I'm looking at an order book (for the first time) and I'm trying to understand what I'm looking at. Can somebody explain the huge order at 1.34302? As soon as offer became 1.34302 the orders started coming off fast, like people really didn't want to have their order to become real. I'm just wondering why this happens. I know it must happen for a reason because I've seen it happen a couple times already. Ok that's the first question......

I also wonder about this series of events. Can anyone explain what all this means? Could somebody with a market order actually be stuck at 1.3442???? It is the next best price right????? I'm interested in exactly what happened to the market here. Particuarly to the large orders. I assume the order for 1.341891 was filled because it appears the market moved immediatly afterwards. Hummm. Ok if some body can give an in depth analysis of what happend here I would appreciate it.

Pictures are 20 seconds apart (exact).

20 seconds later:

20 seconds later:

And finally 20 seconds later:

Hi Matthew,

Not sure what it is that you are looking at.

It is the order book off of HotspotFXI It is a Level II platform. I've never looked at a level II platform so I'm wondering a little bit about the offers listed. The cut and paste job I had to do did make it a little harder to read, but I figured somebody who trades using a level II platform would know what their looking at.

Maybe this would be better placed under brokers discussion?

Sorry,

Just not familiar with it at all.

This could very well be something along the lines of what Darkstar uses to capture all of our stops !

Is it showing order flow?


Lou

Mainly I'm wondering what the effect of the large orders are on the market, an also why the large orders are their to begin with, by that I mean the purpose behind the large orders. An answer like "because they want to buy/sell" won't cut it because I'm not convinced that is the case.

I know it's hard to follow.

I need to get some sleep or I would continue this. Have you ever checked out the Order Board feature at FXCM ? It shows some order flows... also the News Squawk Box there.

Large limit orders to buy or sell at certain prices can be areas of support and resistance.

Sometimes I believe, large funds have options and they use big orders to protect the options from being hit. About this though... you will have to ask someone else.

That's about all I can figure out now.

Goodnight.

Lou

That information is helpful Lou. Thanks. Yes I have the squack box from FXCM. Just got it yesterday.

Sleep well. I'm off to do the same.

Hi

I have used Hotspot FXi and what you are seeing is the total "amount" of the orders at a particular price (the number within the coloured box) and the number of individual orders (the number above the box) that make up the total amount.

The amounts will be changing constantly - either because the rate is dealing at that level, or just because the bank etc have pulled/cancelled/changing their orders - Depending on the liquidity there may often be "large" differences between the bid and offer.

Many of the the offered amounts in your pics are provided by 1 "source", so if they pull them, or get dealt then there may be a big jump to the next best price until new orders are re-input (eg Your part 1, where the offers are at 1.34215, 1.34216 and next best is 1.34421)