RE:Anonymous Trades....
Hey RC,
I am kinda surprised this comes up so much, there is absolutely NO mystery to it.
When you look at level 2 trading data, you can see the House or Institution that was the representative on either side of the buy and sell.
Keeping in mind, that the institution is most often representing an underlyling client, so it isnt RBC, Morgan Stanley perse, but rather a client of theirs, just as you are a client of whomever you use to trade.
However, when institutions have LARGE , potentially market moving orders, they can opt to SHOW their buy or sell as HOUSE ; ANONYMOUS.... as opposed to their actual house number. The idea being, they mask what they are doing.. When the market sees the same house buying or in this case selling over and over... they can conclude that the underlying client still has stock to sell.... and they "front-run" the order. Meaning traders and hot money guys will sell ahead of them... forcing them to sell lower until they are done... then guys back back quickly to cover shorts or catch the inevitable bounce. Textbook as we saw late in todays trading after touching 3.11
If you use ANONYMOUS, you can partially mask the bigger picture of what youre trying to do.
This technique is often used by the Hedge fund guys who agressively short and candidly manipulate price up or down... because they can limit the overt scrutiny that falls on any one trading house perceived to be pushing a single stock down (or up ) intentionally.