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« on: February 20, 2016, 06:08:19 pm »
Has anyone worried about "self trading" sat down and attempted to strategize how they would do this in a market with at least two market makers competing for the reward?
Assume a market with a price of 1:1 and a spread of 5% on both sides.
Alice places an order at .95 and must wait 10 minutes before she qualifies for a reward.
After 9 minutes, Bob places his order at .95001.
Alice is now unable to match herself without buying out Bob first.
Not wanting to let Bob grab the liquidity reward, Alice moves her order to .95002 and the clock resets for 10 more minutes.
This back and forth will continue until the spread is greatly reduced. The narrower the spread, the riskier the market making becomes. Who is going to place a huge wall at the top off the book?
Any rewards paid do not cover 100% of market risks which means market makers will still have to maintain a reasonable spread and there will be MANY orders in front of them.
Go ahead and attempt to name a strategy that works to abuse the rewards in light of market competition.
Lastly assume a 3rd actor, someone who knows market makers are attempting to pump fake volume just to get a reward. This actor will place their orders just in front of the market maker just to collect the spread on the market makers "back and forth" selling.