[chollida1]

> I place a bunch of trades around 25% below the current stock price

Funny, we sat around trying to figure out the right price and this is what we came up with as well.

Too bad this doesn't show up in second level quotes, it would be a good leading indicator of what funds in general thought the chance of a crash was on any given day:)

[steve8918]

I place a limit order, which I guess you could see if the depth were deep enough, but I could very well have programmed an algorithm to just monitor the prices and do market orders instead, which you definitely wouldn't see. I'm sure most traders do it that way.

The interesting thing is that on the day of the Flash Crash, if I'm not mistaken the ES futures contract bounced exactly off the 200 day MA. So, one thing that the flash crash revealed is a lot of algorithms programmed into the markets that would normally never have been revealed. So if you want, keep a floating order just above the 200 day and you might make a few dozen points in a few mins, just like May 6, 2010!

[chollida1]

> but I could very well have programmed an algorithm to just monitor the prices and do market orders instead, which you definitely wouldn't see.

yes, but then you run the danger of your order not getting to the exchange in time and buying at the very bottom after everyone else has been filled.

We nixed this idea as being too risky:(