What size do prop traders and investment banks trade?

[SanMiguel]

What size do prop traders and investment banks trading desks trade?
Just interested because there must be a maximum amount before you start to move the market with a giant order sitting on the order flow. I know they use algos to split these up but in theory in one trade on a large cap, what's the maximum you could do without affecting too much.

 

[murray t turtle]

What size do prop traders and investment banks trading desks trade?
Just interested because there must be a maximum amount before you start to move the market with a giant order sitting on the order flow. I know they use algos to split these up but in theory in one trade on a large cap, what's the maximum you could do without affecting too much.

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Under the legal limit. And in some cases, like Bear Stearns, under the legal limit but bleW up anyway, including but not limited to their hedge funds....................................................................................

 

[vincentnyc]

thousands of shares at a time.

 

[tiddlywinks]

My auto mechanic has 25 shares of AMZN... .000833% of the average daily volume.

 

[tommcginnis]

there must be a maximum amount before you start to move the market

What market? What time of day?
You're right with your intuition that they would want to know how much of an order size would move the market, and may not *wish* to move the market without recognizing (the) cost in doing so, but then too, sometimes you might have to pay some vig in a "flush" scenario, just to avoid the tsunami coming in the next hour(day)(week)(quarter)...

 

[speedo]

Varies

 

[murray t turtle]

Varies

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10,000 is pretty much considered a block trade;
but for small caps or even stuff with semi liquid volume, it Varies.7,000 seems like some is trying to avoid the 10k footprint??

 

[Aline86]

Pretty much but it depends, can go up to thousands of shares in some minutes i will say

 

[SanMiguel]

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10,000 is pretty much considered a block trade;
but for small caps or even stuff with semi liquid volume, it Varies.7,000 seems like some is trying to avoid the 10k footprint??

What is the 10kfootprint? Some sort of exchange limit? You could just have an algo trade 10 x 1,000

 

[murray t turtle]

What is the 10k footprint? Some sort of exchange limit?

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NOT in most stocks or ETfs. I meant on some smaller caps or some stocks say trading under 1 million shares per day;10,000 shares is real convenient math. But could be 7,000 shares , especially a series of 7,000 shares looks a lot less bullish, but still gets the Volume. In other words ,$ 100 bills can be convenient sometimes, but i seldom carry many around+ some dont want to change them them.....................................................................................[And since i mentioned 7k shares on a site of 100,000 traders, 7 k may not mean much NEXT 50 DAYS LOL]