Mirror trades - What do they mean?

[Rich1]

Watching the Time & Sales on a few stocks, I've noticed mirror trades.
Sometimes just a few, and sometimes several during the trading day.

Could anyone explain what these mirror trades mean?
Should we stay away from a stock when we see lots of these?

Any thoughts, experiences, and opinions about this will be much appreciated.
TIA.

[Weirdharold]

I am not sure anyone can truely answer this question, but I will assume they are when someone places an order to sell a stock slightly below what the ask is and a MM buy those shares and uses that buy to fill the order of someone at the higher price... or depending on the direction the MM would like to see the stock move quickly shorts a sell to a person with a buy order in at a slightly higer price than what an offer to sell has been placed with them an the lower price is where they cover at the lower price... sucks but is pure profit for them.

This is only my best deducted guess.... since no one else seems to be willing to venture one.

[Weirdharold]

Ok, a little more research and I came up with information from "How to think like Benjamin Graham and Invest Like Warren Buffett" Pages 59 thru say 62 Interesting enough I will now have to read the whole damn thing.

[Rich1]

Thanks for "venturing' an answer, WeirdHarold.
And I'll try to find some time to read the stuff on that link.
I'd really like to understand what the mirror trades could mean - we sure see a lot of them in the pennies.

[Buku]

So it seems like Mirror trades are not a bad thing or a good thing. It really means nothing more than a trade that went through without using a MM to execute the transaction. (Just two traders "Swapping" shares). At least that is my understanding of it.

[Weirdharold]

That is about what I got out of the book... traders using ECN screens to exchange the shares..... what erks me is the direction they decide to post them... some choose to post the lower price first followed by the higher and others the other way around.... it always seems like they take place excatly opposite how I would like them to show.