I recall a few sites that would show the quantities of block trading, but haven't been able to find anything recently. The latest reports on public sites like MSN (showing mostly selling off of stocks) are from 3-31-08; I figure there is some more recent data either on trades or ownership, at least indirect data sources. Where can I find more timely data on changing ownership of the big players?
Institutional ownership is reflected in the firm's quarterly 13F filings with the SEC. These firms have until 45 days past the quarter-end to file these figures, although many disclose before the deadline.
You can only tell through the SEC filings, most large transactions are not transacted on the major exchanges.
In any market there is a very small percentage of traders who make a very large percentage of the money. The one thing that sets their trades apart is the size of their trades. While it is true that many size traders will try and disguise thier actions, they can't cut it down too much or they will miss the price. A trader with a 1k lot of S&Ps to do may cut it down to 100s but can't cut it down to 10s with any hope of getting them done. By the same token the 10 lot trader NEVER trades a 100 lot. Almost any online package will let you track trades by size. In the emini S&P less than 1% of all transaction are for more than 130 contracts. We use Trade Station time & sales to point out these trades and further have written indicators in the Trade Station Easy Language that show us accumulations of blocks above this size on regular price charts. Not surprising that at or near many extremes you can see an unusual number of these blocks. If you can't see it it real time, it's not worth much.
You don't really want to know. The really big fish are using block trades in dark liquidity pools and OTC. Most of the block trading facilities will not distribute the trade data in a timely manner by design. Some do (like ICE). If I knew who took the other side of my stuff I would probably crap myself. Besides, there is always somebody taking the other side of those blocks.
i believe that market delta can tell you this information. it works best intraday on very liquid contracts such as the es or bonds. the software reports the trades that actually go through, not the lairs poker you see on the DOM. you can it to filter trades larger than x, for example 100 lot. Its an excellent tool, and you can develop different strategies based on the information you see and how you interpret it .
How does it do this? Isn't it limited to whatever data is in the feed you provide it? They are just a software vendor right, not a data provider. So how do they get the large block prints if they're not reported?
The problem with trying to track "big players" using the T&S or any kind of exchange datafeed is that individual orders are limited to the size of the bid/ask. Even if somebody sells 1000 ES contracts at market (which I'd say is a pretty rare thing to do...) 90% of the time you won't get one 1000-car order because there aren't that many bids, it'll print as an order of 400, then 300 a tick lower, then 250 a tick lower than that, and so on.