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Actually having two (or more) market makers benefits the market. Because a single market maker can pause or quit at any moment in time.

• lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  That's the same thing ... An extra Market maker provides no benefit apart from being able to easily prevent there being no Market maker Anyway makers have specialisms and get advantages from the exchange - they are not supposed to just bugger off home cos it's Tuesday
  • tptacek 14y ago
    That's not true. An extra market maker provides the benefit of competing market makers, which should reduce the spread. Most markets are not specialist markets. Specialists at the NYSE were accused of skimming hundreds of millions of dollars from customers. They're an anachronism and a much more disquieting idea than robots competing to provide the best price --- which is pretty much what most HFT systems do.
  • dchichkov 14y ago
    But. That's the thing. They CAN 'bugger off' home at any time. And often do. If a particular market maker can't work for some reason with some particular symbol [there are thousands of symbols], at some particular time, he would just pause. And they often do.