say.. BTC is $1070(sell) on poloniex and $1135(sell) on cex.io why would anyone sell his bitcoin on poloniex at the moment and not transfer them to cex and sell them in there?
The reversed is still true, why would anyone buy on cex since the bitcoin is way cheaper on other markets?
this way and used by large players, called it arbitrage, a simple investor is not profitable to do this you need to have a lot of money on each exchange. And with the arbitrage traded mostly robots! Here's the link for comparing prices:
http://www.arbitrage.expert/