Fine. Go ahead and buy at the ask, at the high of

Fine. Go ahead and buy at the ask, at the high of the day like whoever bought at the open. Someone shorts the shares to you and buys them back within minutes at a lower price. They don't even have to do a locate (find available shares to borrow) -- they just short them, knowing that they are going to cover minutes later at a couple of cents lower. Congratulations, you just gave the market makers a couple cents profit, you made your money unavailable to buy more shares, and this allows them to walk the price down with 100-share "trades" as we have seen so many times in the past.

What a great trading strategy -- if you want to be a sucker.

Instead, put your lowball bid in. If you get filled, then you've got more shares for the money. If you don't get filled, well, that means that they weren't able to move the stock down on 100-share trades. But you still have your money ready and waiting in case they decide to really whack the stock down momentarily, as we have seen in the past.

And if the stock starts moving up, great, go ahead and buy.

All this assumes that people already have a good-sized position in the stock and these are "extra" shares.

And, of course, it's not trading advice. It's just the way that I get cheap shares.