Level 2 Quote Bar

The Level 2 Quote bar displays Level 2 Real- time quotations of individual market makers registered in every NASDAQ listed security as well as market makers' quotes in OTC Bulletin Board securities. data (Market Makers On the NASDAQ system, a broker-dealer willing to accept the risk of holding a particular number of shares of a particular security in order to facilitate trading in that security.
Each Market Maker competes for customer order flow by displaying buy and sell quotations for a guaranteed number of shares. Once an order is received, the Market Maker will immediately sell from its own inventory, or seek the other side of the trade until it is executed, this process takes place in just seconds., ECNs An Electronic Communication Network ( ECN ) is an electronic system that attempts to eliminate third-party orders entered by an exchange Market Maker or an OTC Market Maker by networking major brokerages (and individual traders) so that they can trade directly between themselves without having to go through a middleman., their prices and quote quantities, depth of market, etc.) for NASDAQ stocks, and the primary and regional market quotes, combined with the Third market and ECN quotes for Listed stocks. Bids are displayed on the left, Asks are displayed on the right; Market Makers are displayed with yellow text, and ECNs are displayed with white.

Each row of data includes (by default) the market participant ID (the primary or regional exchange, Third market, or ECNs ID for Listed stocks), their quoted price, and the number of shares that can be bought or sold at that price (divided by 100). NASDAQ quotes come directly from NASDAQ’s (SuperMontage) feeds; ECN depths come directly from each ECN; Listed stock quotes come directly from the each stock’s primary exchange. Price tiers are defined and separated by the background color (gradually darkening shades of blue). If you want, you can aggregate and display the quotes by price tier, with or without displaying your own orders separately; see the Montage Monitor Settings topic for more information.

• Global Level 2 data is displayed differently; each row of data includes (by default) the number of orders (Bids or Asks) in the price tier, the number of shares that can be bought or sold, and the quoted price. The columns in the Bid and Ask panes are mirrored (e.g., Bid -> orders, shares, price; Ask -> price, shares, orders).

Full depth of book for Archipelago, Instinet, and Brass Utilities, and partial depth of book for INET and BTRD are available, and you can add depth of book for any valid ECN subscription. Check the Destination field on the Order bar or Smart Action bar for valid ECNs.

The orders that you submit, as well as the orders submitted by users you supervise, will appear with an orange background and an  asterisk (*) to the left of the ECN, Market Maker, or exchange. If you want, you can change the text and background colors, font, font size, and font characteristics through the Style tab of the Properties dialog box; see the Style Tab topic for more information.