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Spotting the AXThe AX describes a market participant (most likely a market maker) who reoccurs on the bid or ask side buying selling large amount of shares and therefore is blocking the market. Other definitions simply describe the “ax” as the market participant who has the most influence on the stock price. I would like to stick with the extreme example where the “ax” is literally blocking the market. You can find the “ax” by simply watching the stock you are looking to trade. Imagine you are looking to trade a stock long, but every time it gets close to your setup price MLCO (a market maker) gets on the best ask and keeps selling shares. Even though there are many trades going off on the ask, meaning that there are a lot of buyers, the stock isn’t moving higher. He is clearly blocking the market and can therefore be called the “ax”. The reason why he is doing this might be a huge customer sell order that he has to execute. Note: he might only be displaying 100 shares for sale, even though he has a lot more to sell. He can do this by auto refreshing his quote once his 100 shares are sold. It is never a good idea to trade against the “ax”; you should wait for him to disappear, before making a long commitment. Most of the times when you see an “ax”, it will be from one of the big and influential market maker firms, i.e. MLCO (Merill Lynch), MSCO SBSH, and GSCO. That's it for the AX... Let's now check out the list of market makers both in the US and in Canada 
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