A block trade is a large-scale purchase or sale of securities that occur outside of an open market. It uses blockhouse as a financial intermediary to aid investors with risk management.
What Is A Block Trade?
The essence of a large order transaction is referred to as a “block trade.” A blockhouse, which is a financial intermediary committed to aiding investors with risk management, is frequently used to conduct block transactions. it is a method where traders simultaneously purchase and sell a significant number of securities without affecting the market price.
Block trading is generally done by institutions and hedge funds due to the enormous magnitude of the transactions. This form of trading is comparable to over-the-counter trading (OTC Trading) because of its confidential nature.
Individual investors are not too keen on making block transactions because of the magnitude of trades in both the debt and equity markets. In practice, big hedge funds and large-scale investors purchase and sell enormous quantities of bonds and shares in block transactions through investment banks and other mediators.
If a block trade is made on the open market, traders must exercise caution since the transaction might result in substantial volume changes and have an influence on the market value of the shares or bonds being acquired. As a result, instead of acquiring assets directly from a hedge fund or investment bank as they would for lesser sums, block trades are generally done through a middleman.
A block trade should contain at least 10,000 shares in the stock market or $200,000 in bonds in the treasuries market, as per the New York Stock Exchange, but this amount is usually much greater in reality. These aren’t penny stocks; they are well-known corporations or blue-chip equities. Blocks are classified as over-the-counter (OTC) commodities since they are traded outside the open market or a centralized exchange. As the open market fluctuates in terms of asset value and volume, this serves to maintain the price of the securities.
Blockchain has a significant role in the futures market. Futures trading is a contract that permits two parties to purchase and sell a financial asset at a predetermined price on a future date. This is comparable to block trading but on a much bigger level.
In contrast, these derivatives often deal with tiny securities orders and include stocks, foreign currency, commodities, and indexes. A block transaction in futures or options produces a contract that stands out from others in the same genre.
Consider the following scenario to better understand block trading: If a hedge fund wants to sell 350,000 shares of a company for $5 each, it can do it in one or multiple transactions. A blockhouse connects buyers and sellers, negotiates a contract, and sees it through. Now, it can decide to sell all 350,000 shares at once to one interested party, or it may find 35 buyers who buy 10,000 shares, each.
All of these transactions occur simultaneously. By employing a blockhouse, this legislation claims to keep market volatility low and minimize slippage between trades, as financial securities sometimes alter prices unexpectedly.
Block trading follows the same principles (more or less) in the blockchain environment. Many major crypto exchanges offer this feature. Binance, for example, provides customers with a customized block trading mechanism to trade big block sizes, usually greater than 10 BTC. It also provides over-the-counter (OTC) trading which is a viable alternative to trading directly on exchange order books for big orders, when an investor risks affecting the token’s market price and lowering their execution level.
