Unlike the bulk of trading in stocks, this trade was made anonymously and was executed outside of the market where retail investors and institutions meet. And unlike a trade on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, no one will ever know who put a million shares up for sale and who just bought them.
Liquidnet is one of dozens of new private trading networks that -- in just two years' time -- have ushered in a sea change that challenges Wall Street's top institutions while posing vexing questions for regulators and investors alike.
Driven by the boom in electronic trading and other technological advances, a range of upstart entrepreneurs now are doing the kind of bulk trading that up until a few years ago was practiced exclusively in upstairs trading rooms at big brokerages like Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
Cheap and efficient but also largely unregulated and anonymous these private trading systems are changing the way markets work.
The long term impact is open to question at this point. But the obvious way of looking at it suggests greater profits for big traders at the expense of small ones. And in the long run, reduced information in the markets means less profits for everybody.
Jay