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jeremyjohnolson

Selling or Buying (Big Buyer or Big Seller)?

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I have a question.  I was just listening to a recorded webinar where an experienced trader noted that there was a large order that went through on the time and sales.  The order was red, meaning it executed on the bid.  The trader said something to the effect of, "I do not know if that was a buyer or a seller on the bid, but I don’t care, I only care that it was a big transaction".  I have heard other experienced traders say similar types of things, similar in that they are identifying a transaction as either being done by a big buyer or big seller.  So, my question is what do they really mean by this?  I mean, doesn't every transaction by definition consist of an equal number of shares being exchanged on both the buy and the sell side?  There is no such thing as a one-sided transaction where you only have a buyer or only have a seller.

My theory of what I think they might mean when they say this is that even though for each share exchanged there has to be an equal number of shares sold as shares purchased, there does not have to be an equal number of sellers and purchasers.  In other words, the structure of the transaction could be such that you have trader A selling 100,000 shares and traders B, C, D, E, F, G, ... cumulatively buying up his 100,000.  Or you could have the opposite scenario where you have trader A buying 100,000 and all the other traders selling to him.  In the first case, where trader A is selling, you would say shares are being sold, in the second where trader A is buying, you would say shares are being bought, or, there is a big buyer.  So in short, it's based on the anomaly or outlier trader, A being the anomaly or outlier, because at any given moment, in a liquid stock, you have several buyers and sellers at many different price levels, but an anomaly would be to have one very large buyer or seller.  Am I thinking of this correctly, or do they mean something else when they say shares are being sold, or shares are being bought?

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