Sirius Manipulation
Many traders use Level II to access realtime quotations of individual market makers registered in every NASDAQ and OTC Bulletin Board listed securities. As you probably know, Level II shows you a “ranked” list of the best bid and ask price from each market making participant. What happens when Level II is used by market makers to signal or indicate moves in advance? Do they actually do this? You bet they do. Let’s look at a recent example where market makers are signaling each other using what I call a “floating bid or ask indicator” in Sirius XM ( NASDAQ:SIRI ).
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In the example above, in Sirius XM ( NASDAQ: SIRI ) Level II, you can see the bid is .3571, ask is .3588, and last trade is .3587. Do you notice the market maker NSDQ (Q) sitting quietly on the bid 7000 shares @ .36? What are they trying to communicate? It seems the market makers are communicating which direction they are wanting to take the stock. In this example, they are wanting to take Sirius XM’s stock price higher which is exactly what happened. The stock price moved up to .36 and the floating bid order was removed.
So what does this mean? You decide. 
Looking good for Sirius XM Radio Inc.
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Comment by David G. pope on 24 March 2009:
This is very interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bid above the last traded, bid, and ask sit never executed? Why would ANYONE bid above the asking price? AND why doesn’t that order get taken out???
Comment by ShortyisFunny on 24 March 2009:
It tells me to buy SIRI.