Block trade

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In finance, a block trade is a trade that is usually at least 10,000 shares of a stock or $200,000 of bonds.

Block trading is a useful measure for analysts in order to assess where institutional investors are pricing a stock. Because in a merger or acquisition, a bid needs to "clear the market" (i.e. enough shareholders need to tender), it is most useful to see at what prices large "blocks" of stock are trading. These prices imply what the largest shareholders are willing to sell their shares for; thus in block trading analysis, small trades are ignored to avoid skewing the data.