Time and sales shenanigans.

I like to learn...good thing or I might get ticked. $6 lesson, cheap one as I applied my rules this time.

I was watching the T&S and noticed a lot of trades hitting the ask price but those were never appearing in the quotes... i suspect market orders or those out of sight transactions but there were a lot of them. Looked like buyer(s) wanting in at all costs and here I am sitting on a short watching these orders going through and the price is not really moving. Decided it wasn't good as there were 4800 and 5000 share orders going through fast...well in the green and this stock usually has 100-500 share orders. I held from a 20 cent profit as I figured these HAVE to dry up soon as the asks were pretty thick. They never dried up so I bailed. I set my warning stop, trickled past it to hit my hard stop. At least I beat the price jump, which did eventually happen. Just the pullback was not very much which was why I held it. Could have taken a profit but I wanted to try waiting out the flurry as this was at the high for the day. I bet it drops now but I cannot hang around to watch or trade.

Normally I don't see much over 2500 per minute, this week has been hectic...especially I suppose after the meltdown. Everyone scurrying about trying to figure out what to do next. 20K in the opening minute I think when that usually takes 3 minutes to get to.

I haven't setup level 2 quotes yet, just general market depth so I couldn't tell who was buying...I bet had I known I would have jumped at the very first large transaction expecting more.