[Soultrader]

Not necessarily keymoo. If you watch the tape closely you can see the footprints of these bigger traders. First, a 10lot trader is not going to do any harm. He will simply appear as a small guy if he is scaling out at 5 and 5. What I am interested in is those bigger traders who scale out at 10+ lots each. Not only that... you will be surprised to see the 50+ lot traders who exit all at once. There are plenty of them out there to see their footprints. Also you find traders have weird lot sizes at times. Sometimes you see a 88 lot trader... now when you see 44 lot at the market what does this tell you? The 88 lot trader is scaling out.

Now I do not know exact figures but I do think more traders use market orders than limit. Even if this is not the case you can see clear footprints of those that use market orders. Even if big traders started using limit order, you can see that price is being sold as there is no price advancement with high volume.

The tape tells it all. Whether market or limit, doesnt make a difference if you are able to read the tape. You can also tell if the orders you see on tape are simply stops or sellers. If 10+ lots sell orders started to appear on tape what does this tell you? Well... first of all did 10+ lot buy orders appear near the top of the rally? If yes, this would indicate stops. If no, this would indicate shorts.

Also, I am not interested in insitutional orders on these intraday swings. (not referring to 500pt decline days) They do not care about these swings and they may have traders working their orders their entire day. If they want to accumulate, volume shows all their footprints. If they distribute, volume will show this as well. Try to think of it in a more micro basis. Short covering by big money can be detected with market profile and volume. Short covering by day traders and floor traders can be detected by tape.