Man, @smooth, that helps a lot. I had to track down what was happening and scratch my head at it. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to someday make a post about it and maybe interview you about it. I have a couple comments for later. But for now, this one comes to mind: have you considered that it may be counter-productive at times to manual traders? I'd invite you to go to the market, come up with a plan, and try to set up some manual trades... there are times in which the bots just dominate as they swap/delete/hedge/buy/sell while the humans are sort of like... Huh? There is an aggravating factor to them. I'd even like to game your bots, but it's good to know about the bandwidth criterion.

Could you (at minimum) try a few different tweaks here and there and see if they can work and play well with humans? You may not think about the bots much, but if I get going with my idea, I think I could out-bot them when you least expect it. I'd like to discuss the particulars elsewhere, if you don't mind.

Also, what would happen if you shut down the bots? Have you studied that? Does the market all of a sudden go into meltdown or something?

Thanks again for replying, and thanks @timcliff for this post.