What is Nasdaq SuperMontage TotalView?

Detailed depth makes the difference.

TotalView is the newest data product from the NASDAQ SuperMontage suite—a powerful tool to help you make better-informed trading decisions based on the increased depth and liquidity in SuperMontage. SuperMontage allows individual market participants to post multiple quotes in a single NASDAQ security and allows all market participants to enter anonymous order interest for immediate execution in NASDAQ.

TotalView creates transparency from this additional market depth and provides you with even more and deeper insight into market participants’ trading interest than today’s NASDAQ Level II service. Unlike Level II, which only displays each participant’s best quote, TotalView enables traders and investors to see the full picture, including participants’ additional interest within pennies of their best quotes, plus anonymous order interest submitted to SuperMontage.

Level II vs. TotalView
New perspective smarter trades.

To take full advantage of SuperMontage, traders need more information than Level II provides.

TotalView shows each market participant’s best quote—as Level II displays today—plus every additional quote and order position available for immediate execution in NASDAQ within the first five price levels. TotalView traders have an advantage over Level II traders because they can see the full depth of the NASDAQ market and the drivers of this depth—the maximum amount of information available. The detailed depth helps TotalView traders to:

• Identify trading opportunities
  
  
• Pursue unique trading strategies
  
  
• Follow pockets of liquidity over time
  
  
• Better understand how orders are distributed throughout the market.

Level II vs. TotalView – Example

The following example uses real, historical quote data to show how TotalView provides a better look at NASDAQ market activity and the opportunity for better trading results than Level II. This example demonstrates only a portion of the potential strategies using TotalView’s detailed depth information.

Thinking Amazon.com might be headed up sharply on April 24th, a trader decided to go long up to 2,000 shares if buy-side pressure appeared in the market. The inside quote at 11:59 was 24.98 24.99 500 x 400.

Using both Level II and TotalView, the trader is able to see that the best quotes, and quotes near the best, are most likely being generated by retail orders, since GVR and Knight are prevalent on the buy side. But, with the advantage of TotalView, the trader sees that SuperMontage has, in fact, ten times more liquidity available for immediate execution just below the inside than is visible in Level II.

TotalView shows the trader significant price pressure on the bid and he buys 1,800 shares. Using only Level II, the trader wouldn’t have seen the buy-side pressure because it showed only modest depth at each of the top five price levels.

The trader sees a run-up in the stock price over the next hour. At 1:05 p.m. ET, the stock is trading at 25.36 25.37 1100 x 400. With the TotalView advantage, the trader sells his 1,800 shares for an average price of $25.349 and gains profits of $624. If the trader had used only Level II, he would have missed this opportunity, and consequently, he wouldn’t have made any profits.