Premarket nasdaq Bid/ask inaccurate

[stenger]

So am having a problem that I hope someone has some insight into. I have been a trader of nasdaq stocks for years and do quite a bit of premarket trading. The problem I have is that esignal is no longer showing me the correct premarket bid/ask quotes and this seems to be somehow related to the way nasdaq has changed the pre-opening of the market in the last week with their opening cross. I’ll give you an example…even though I could trade a stock such as Intc this morning with a bid and offer right around 21.40 esginal was reporting 22.38 bid and 20.24 offer which is not an accurate reflection of the marketplace.

I guess my question is: Am I no longer to get an accurate reflection of the current bid offer in the market until 5 minutes before “opening”?…I’m sure I am not the only person who is having an issue with this. If I am mistaken and should be looking at these quotes differently now I would hope someone could help me.

Thanks, Scott

[DuaneG]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the post. We did some cross checking of our data with competitive services and found that all are displaying the crossed bid/ask in the pre-market hours. As we are keeping in line with the changes made to NASDAQ, we don't have any plans to alter the way in which the data is transmitted. I'm including a link from the NASDAQ Trader website that discusses this change in more detail. To read the article, click here.

[stenger]

Thanks for the response Duane.

Yes I have read everything on the site about the crossed bid/ask...and maybe no one can answer this but i just don't understand how it shows where the market is with a bid a dollar below the market and the bid a dollar above...am I just supposed to average the two and figure it out? Seems like it's much LESS accurate rather than more.

Scott

[stenger]

I guess maybe I just don't understand how you determine the current trading price in the premarket since i still get a size bid and offer and exact price during the day. Why not the premarket?

A very frustrated trader