Large retail order

The stock that we are talking about, is it BRKA?

 

I dont see the big deal. Simply go buy puts, and sell some calls against it, and then sell your stock. What you lose in slippage, you'll capture in options.

Its not that big a deal.

 

arbitrage much?

 

Wow thats genius. That is assuming you experience no spread slippage in options and can execute quick enough to capture the effect of selling the stock. Oh yeah, dont forget to ignore the options commissions.

Split up the order and put out offers on NYSE and maybe some on major ECNs. Do not waste money by giving it to a broker, you can fragment the order yourself, it's not that complicated. In fact, if you give up the ticker of the stock, I'm sure more than a few ppl on this website, including myself can write up a quick protocol on how to do it.

 

Its obvious, from your comment, that you have no institutional experience. His order isnt a big deal and giving it to some two-bit broker to work is simply giving money to some sleaze, who will take advantage of the guy and hand out party favors to other brokers.

Work the order yourself or transfer your account to a bigger house who will execute for you with virtually no slippage.

 

they should have a option where you can vwap the order..this way you don't have to worry about destablizing the market or worrying about someone screwing it up

 

So what is the average volume of the stock in question?

What are your routing choices with E*TRADE?

I like the VWAP idea - might make sense to transfer the position to a broker that supports it (like IB, for example). Still, you need to be aware that they're just going to run a bot that attempts to get better than VWAP, so you still need to be sensitive to the ADV of the stock. If it's a 300K/day stock, you still need to break it up, even if you use VWAP (or better yet, find a broker who wants your future biz to work it manually for you).

 

or, if your position represents a large percentage of the avg daily volume, you can break up your order and execute over a period of days (presuming you don't have to sell it all in one day)..

 

Is this the real question?

 

I was primarily looking for advice on how best to approach selling a bit larger block than normal but of course that answer relies directly on the order execution details.

Thanks to all for your responses, this has been very helpful!