Beware of bad quotes on TD Ameritrade and Prophet

Hope everyone had a good trading day.

I don't know if it was because of the volume but after the fed today, Prophet charts were very spotty. I also noticed that options bid/ask on Ameritrade was broken. Trade execution worked flawlessly and I got a couple trades done (mostly rolling out calls). Keep an eye on it and be careful. Yet another reason why you should always use limit orders.

For example, AEO May 17.5 Puts were being quoted on Ameritrade as 0.75/0.75 or 0.75/0.85 but the actual quote was 0.65/0.75.

I am going to try to avoid the market the next two days due to the quadruple expiration.

Perplexed by partial fills

I am learning new things about the markets every day that I am trading options. One of these new things that continue to surprise me is partial fills. If your trades are small compared to the liquidity of a stock, you rarely see this. For example, if you trade 500 shares of GE, it is usually always executed in a single fill. However, if you trade 500 shares of a company like USEC (USU), then you might get fills of 100 shares at a time (especially if you use a limit order). This, I understand.

What I don't get is why sometimes people are just out to get you. Take a look at the following trade result. That's right, I got filled 4 shares of a 3.49 stock. Someone paid a commission to sell 13.96 worth of shares. I don't think it is a part of a larger order because I was sitting on that limit order for a while. Notice the round lot fills around it.

Is it just a mistake or is it a glimpse into the sort of people that trade micro cap issues? Did they want to bail out and get a couple dollars from their position? Either way, it sucked for me since it took a really long time for the last 96 shares to be filled and I saw lots of round lots fly by. In the end, someone else got filled 96 and then is looking to sell 4 shares and the annoyance gets passed around.