One of the keys to truly understand the market is to look into the unfilled and intentionally-to-be canceled orders. In some instances, the unfilled orders account for more than 95% of all the orders during the trading hours. In 2018, approximately 96% of all orders were canceled on both NYSE and NASDAQ. On some markets, the daily Cancel-to-Trade Ratio was as high as 4,437, meaning for every executed order, there were 4,437 orders canceled on that day.  

The market is often manipulated by those unfilled orders.

Current financial markets, including cryptocurrency exchanges, can easily be abused by market insiders with front-running, direct price manipulation and spoofing, especially since the rise of proprietary dark pools and high-frequency trading (HFT). As a result, customers lost billions of dollars to the very broker-dealers they entrusted their money to, and even to the broker’s other high-frequency trading clients every year. While these practices are not necessarily illegal in some jurisdictions under current regulation, they are certainly unethical everywhere.

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission Market Activity Report.