With QCharts - is there a way to determine whether a trade is a buy or sell ? It's obvious for the trades that are made at the bid or ask. But what about trades made between the bid and ask ? Also - I've been following a small wireless stock (WLGS) - and there have been some large trades occurring consistently after normal market hours. Example - on Friday 16 FEB 01 there was a 620,000 trade at 4:09:34. Was that trade a buy or sell ? Any clue why such large trades are occurring consistently after normal market hours ? TIA.
Just curious... What do you mean? Everytime a trade is executed, there is always a buy and a sell. Isn't there always two sides to a trade?
When you place a NASDAQ trade, it is through a market maker. So you are buying from or selling to a market maker. A stock that you sell to a market maker may be the same stock that I buy from a market maker. They are two separate transactions. I really wish I knew whether that large trade was a buy or sell. I hear various theories on some of the stock threads but I thought I would ask the experts here.
wirelessbull, Maybe these posts will shed some light into what p2 is trying to say: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=13204612 http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=13204787
Dustin - thanks for the information. Interesting info on the mechanics of a market maker moving a large order. "Finally, after several hours, the market maker will accumulate the 100k shares in his own account, and will then transfer these shares, as a block, out of his/her account and into the account of their customer. This is the block trade that you normally will see. Typically the block will print after the order is already filled one small piece at a time over several hours time." However, my question still remains, was the large block trade for 620,000 shares that I mentioned earlier someone buying or someone selling ? Was the market maker moving a large buy order or a large sell order ? If the print is just showing up and many of the trades actually took place hours ago, the trade price shown could have been a buy or sell. Is there a way to find out ?
I could be wrong but I believe there are two ways that these large orders can be executed. One is the way in the post above. An example of the other way is when a seller is able to find a buyer, and the trade is crossed at either the price agreed upon, or the VWAP and the end of the day. In both situations there is no way to know if the trade was intended as a buy or sell. That is closely guarded info for good reason. Bear Sterns isn't going to advertise that they just sold 500,000 shares of SCMR for Goldman Sachs...as an example.
Thanks Dustin. It just frustrates me for the information to be sitting there (i.e. large block trade) and I have no way to interpret it at the most basic level - i.e. huge buy went through or huge sell went through. Here we have some significant market action - but no way to analyze it.