Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Citicorp's Dark Pools

Pam Martens describes some of the dark pools Citicorp uses. It's a fairly complex subject but essentially it is a way of trading stocks without going through a regulated stock exchange. Citi is really into this activity. 

The latest FINRA report shows that in one week Liquifi, a dark pool owned by a unit of Citigroup, traded 5,865,427 shares of stock; another dark pool owned by a unit of Citigroup, LavaFlow, traded 98,604,159 shares of stock; and Citi Cross, also owned by a unit of Citigroup, traded 37,547,262 shares of stock. In short, Citigroup routed 92.23 percent of its customers’ orders in New York Stock Exchange Euronext traded stocks – to itself. 

Four dark pools - Automated Trading Desk, Renaissance, Tradebot, and Getco – accounted for roughly 25 to 30 percent of all stock trading in the United States. 

These dark pools are not restricted to this country.FINRA records show that Citigroup is operating 48 foreign firms trading securities.

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