I have been watching the quotes on my level 2 screen and I have noticed that there are large blocks of stock that show up on the tape that do not show up in the order book. For example NVDA was trading and 40.63 bid and 40.64 ask, then I see a trade go through for 50,000 shares at 40.45. Why does this order not show up on the level 2 quotes, and does this tell you guys anything when this happens. Mark
offboard tape trade basically a broker to broker facilitated trade, which gets reported to the ACT tape (NASD) and then disseminated to the market's consolidated tape. block trade possibly as well, on Pipeline ECN (institutional block trading)
Are these trades reported in real time. I am just wondering because the price is different from the current bid/ask. Also can you draw any conclussions to where the price is headed based on these large trades. I was trading GRMN friday and the price got up the 44 then I started seeing blocks of 25,000 to 50,000 shares trading at around 43.70, wich was lower than the current bid/ask price. within about 10 minutes of this happening the stock slid all the way down to the 43.40 range.
They have a time stamp. They're outside the spread because of the size - eg, SBSH called BOFA, said they had 50m NVDA to sell, BOFA saw 40.63 and said "I'll pay 40.45". If SBSH had tried to sell that much online it would have taken forever, or the price down to 35 BTW, NVDA current 30.65 - nice trade sbsh