The Bruce Overnight Edge: Banner vs. Hulk: The Two Faces of Overnight

Selecting a favorite “Bruce” is no easy task at the BOE, given the sheer number of legendary figures who share our name. If you’d like to talk about the innovative, inspirational, and pioneering spirit of your preferred Bruce or discuss the origin of our name, give us a ring. Here at the BOE, Bruce Banner is certainly a strong contender. So, when a recent study of retail order behavior on Bruce ATS presented two starkly different sides, we naturally thought of the fictional duality between Mr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.

Our study¹ analyzed more than 25 million retail orders, totaling over 5 billion ordered shares. The orders in the study traded over 600 million shares traded on Bruce ATS. We categorized each order into one of five buckets based on price aggressiveness upon arrival: Passive, Join, Improve, Cross, and Thru. By definition, a passive order is less likely to execute than a crossing order.

Table 1: Price Disposition based on Order Side and Price Relative to the Bruce Best Bid and Offer

Analyzing how retail flow interacts in the overnight market we found the stark contrast of Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.

The Bruce Banner Market: Order Counts

Dr. Bruce Banner is quiet, methodical, scientific, and non-threatening.

Chart 1: Retail Order Distribution by Price Disposition (Aggression Order)

When you look at this data in aggression order (left-to-right), several items jump out:

• 10.8% of orders are Cross or Thru and therefore marketable at the time of order entry
• 53.5% of orders are building book depth beyond the inside market
• 34.2% of orders tighten the Bruce spread

In the end, the vast majority of retail orders either build depth to our book (Passive), add size at the Bruce BBO (Join), or tighten our BBO (Improve).

The Incredible Hulk Market: Shares Traded

The Incredible Hulk is aggressive and takes action with immense power and does not exhibit the patience of Dr. Bruce Banner.

When we look at shares traded on the same aggression scale, the dynamic completely flips. The green monster takes over.

Chart 2: Retail Shares Traded by Price Disposition (Aggression Order)

Key observations regarding retail Shares Traded on Bruce ATS:

• Despite representing only 10.8% of total orders, the marketable orders (Cross and Thru) represent a whopping 63.2% of the shares traded
• Passive orders represent over half of the orders (53.5%) and contribute only 6.8% of the shares traded
• 93.2% of all shares traded are tied to orders that change the Bruce BBO (size or price)

Bruce Banner AND the Incredible Hulk

The two bar charts above are visually very distinct and the difference is critical to understanding the overnight market. Here at the BOE, we talk about retail flow a lot because it drives the overnight session (see BOE 24 - Retail in the Night, Part II, BOE 20 - Under Retail Pressure). During the study retail represented 54.7% of all shares traded. It takes the large-scale passive order sending of Bruce Banner and the aggressive orders of the Incredible Hulk to make the overnight market go.

By The Numbers

May is in the books, and it was another great month of growth here at Bruce Markets:

Weekly Top 25 Symbols²

Bruce on Tour

• Our CEO Jason Wallach will attend the Nasdaq 2026 Global Retail Executive Forum in NYC on June 4th and looks forward to connecting with attendees.

Overnight News

The Limit Up-Limit Down (LULD) committee published a plan amendment for overnight volatility protections expected to commence December 6.

The Bruce Markets Team

¹All data for this study is from internal Bruce ATS sources covering trade dates 04/01/2026 through 05/27/2026. The study included all orders including cancel/replace or modified orders. All comparisons to for price disposition are in relationship to the Bruce ATS Best Bid and Best Offer (BBO) at the time of order entry. The study utilized an internal Bruce ATS classification to separate all activities into one of three segments (Retail, Proprietary/Market Maker, and Agency Broker) and focused exclusively on Retail orders.

²Top 25 data is from internal Bruce ATS sources through trade date 05/29/2026.