Do dark pools have to declare the volume transacted at the end of the day?
"Members of the Federal Reserve System keep track of what money a bank has (if it's not in the vault), who owns what shares of stock, who owns what bond, etc. The part of the Federal Reserve System that tracks stock ownership is the Depository Trust Company (DTC). They have a group of subsidiaries that settle various types of security transactions. DTC is a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, a limited-purpose   trust company under New York State banking law and a registered   clearing agency with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There's lots of information on their website describing this process. DTCC's subsidiary, The Depository Trust Company (DTC), established in   1973, was created to reduce costs and provide clearing and settlement   efficiencies by immobilizing securities and making ""book-entry""   changes to ownership of the securities. DTC provides securities   movements for NSCC's net settlements1, and settlement for institutional   trades (which typically involve money and securities transfers between   custodian banks and broker/dealers), as well as money market   instruments. Black pools are trades done where the price is not shared with the market. But the DTC is the one who keeps track of who owns which shares. They have records of all net transactions2. The DTC is the counterparty for transactions. When stock moves from one entity to another the DTC is involved. As the central counterparty for the nation's major exchanges and   markets, DTCC clears and settles virtually all broker-to-broker equity 1. This is the link that shows that settlements are reported on a ""net basis"". 2. If broker A sells 1000 shares of something to broker B at 8 and then five minutes later broker B sells the 1000 shares back to A, you cannot be sure that that total volume will be recorded. No net trading took place and there would be fees to pay for no reason if they reported both trades. Note: In dark pool trading quite often the two parties don't know each other. For shares (book-keeping records) to be exchanged it has to be done through a Clearing House."
"Why would you consider it null and void? It might be that something went wrong and the business ""lost"" the transaction one way or another. It might be something else. It might never appear. It might appear. In one of the questions a while ago someone posted a link of a story where an account was overdrawn because of a forgotten debit card charge that resurfaced months later. Can't find the link right now, but it can definitely happen." It's not about moving the market or liquidity the non current months have reduced liquidity, checking today.  ES_F June today the most recent 5 min bar has 809 volume. while the september has 10616 volume on the same bar.  2. Commision p/l should be subtracted as actual actual.  I'm not necessarily worried about moving the market or liquidity im more or less worried about slippage. As some good strategies can decay very fast due to it. I know this is the rule in general but what about things like De Beers diamond company artificially inflating the price of diamonds? From what I've read there are lots and lots of diamonds in storage but they control the flow. Couldn't this tactic work with other products/commodities using the right marketing campaigns? When I place an order with Scottrade I also have to specify if I am wanting to trade outside of normal hours. The stock markets are closed on week-ends and public holidays because the Banks are closed. The Banking is a must to settle the payment obligations. So you may buy and sell as much as you wish, but unless money changes hands, nothing has really happened.   Now as to why Banking itself is closed on week-ends and public holidays, well a different question :) Keeping the system 24 hrs up and running does not actually push volumes, but definately push expenses for brokers, Banks etc. There definately is some convinience to buyers and sellers. Well the thing to understand about HFT is that the volume levels heavily affect not just the earnings but also the ecosystem. HFT is almost always liquidity constrained so the volume and volatility is going to affect the overall profitability of the strategy since less of these things means fewer and smaller trading opportunities.  Since 2008 volume and volatility have been heavily negatively correlated with risk-on/risk-off. During risk-off periods investors seem to panic and trading hits a frentic pace. This describes late 2008 and more recently August 2011. Even in 2012 the highest volume/volatility period was in May when the Euro deals were in danger. Risk-on environments tend to be marked be calm, orderly buying.  Second the dark pool issue is bringing liquidity out of the lit markets where HFT normally makes its money. The primary reason for this trend is that dark pools are allowed to offer sub-penny quotes whereas lit exchanges are not. Because of this arbitrary regulatory constraint most of the time dark pools are going to offer better prices, especially on thick book securities.  But beyond that the level of volume effects some HFT players more heavily then others. Imagine all the HFT firms as a pride of lions. When volume is high and liquidity is flowing it's like the pride has brought in a giant water buffalo. The biggest, baddest cats eat first, but there's still food left for the cubs after they're finished feeding.  But if the pride only brings in say a baby gazelle the alpha cats will eat everything and the runts will go hungry. That basically describes what's happening now. A firm like RennTech or GETCO will make less money in a low volume environment, but still do fine. Marginal firms like Eladian will lose the ability to make any money.  Since the marginal firms need the press and the dominant firms tend to be more secretive than the NSA, you'll tend to read more about the former than the latter. "Most of your money doesn't exist as physical cash, but simply as numbers in a ledger. At any given time, banks expect their clients to withdraw a certain percentage of their balances... For instance, checking accounts are frequently drawn down to zero, savings accounts might be emptied once our twice a year, CDs are almost never withdrawn, etc. To cover those withdrawals, banks keep a certain amount of physical cash on hand, and an additional amount remains on the ledgers. The rest gets loaned out to their customers for use in buying homes, cars, credit cards,etc. Anything they can't loan out directly gets deposited with the federal reserve or loaned directly to other institutions who need it. However, those last two options tend to be short term (ie overnight) loans. With debit cards functioning 24/7, you could get cash at an atm or make a purchase anytime of the day our night. The weekend has nothing to do with it. Which is a long way of saying ""No, they do it all the time, not just on weekends"" ;)" "When processing credit/debit cards there is a choice made by the company on how they want to go about doing it.  The options are Authorization/Capture and Sale. For online transactions that require the delivery of goods, companies are supposed to start by initially Authorizing the transaction.  This signals your bank to mark the funds but it does not actually transfer them.  Once the company is actually shipping the goods, they will send a Capture command that tells the bank to go ahead and transfer the funds.  There can be a time delay between the two actions.  3 days is fairly common, but longer can certainly be seen.  It normally takes a week for a gas station local to me to clear their transactions. The second one, a Sale is normally used for online transactions in which a service is immediately delivered or a Point of Sale transaction (buying something in person at a store).  This action wraps up both an Authorization and Capture into a single step. Now, not all systems have the same requirements.  It is actually fairly common for people who play online games to ""accidentally"" authorize funds to be transferred from their bank.  Processing those refunds can be fairly expensive.  However, if the company simply performs an Authorization and never issues a capture then it's as if the transaction never occurred and the costs involved to the company are much smaller (close to zero) I'd suspect they have a high degree of parents claiming their kids were never authorized to perform transactions or that fraud was involved.  If this is the case then it would be in the company's interest to authorize the transaction, apply the credits to your account then wait a few days before actually capturing the funds from the bank.   Depending upon the amount of time for the wait your bank might have silently rolled back the authorization.  When it came time for the company to capture, then they'd just reissue it as a sale. I hope that makes sense.  The point is, this is actually fairly common.  Not just for games but for a whole host of areas in which fraud might exist (like getting gas)." "See ""Structuring transactions to evade reporting requirement prohibited."" You absolutely run the risk of the accusation of structuring. One can move money via check, direct transfer, etc, all day long, from account to account, and not have a reporting issue. But, cash deposits have a reporting requirement (by the bank) if $10K or over. Very simple, you deposit $5000 today, and $5000 tomorrow. That's structuring, and illegal.  Let me offer a pre-emptive ""I don't know what frequency of $10000/X deposits triggers this rule. But, like the Supreme Court's, ""We have trouble defining porn, but we know it when we see it. And we're happy to have these cases brought to us,"" structuring is similarly not 100% definable, else one would shift a bit right."" You did not ask, but your friend runs the risk of gift tax issues, as he's not filing the forms to acknowledge once he's over $14,000." No. Busts are very infrequent, and if an equity were illiquid enough to be affected, the bust cost would be enormous. For a liquid equity, the amount of busted volume is insignificant except during a flash crash or flash spike.  Then it would be reasonable to redownload. This depends on the practise and applications available with the Beneficiary Bank. For a corporate customer, the details are show. For Retail customers they are generally not shown. You are asking 'what if', do you have some anticipated answers? Having volume smaller than open interest is the norm. As far as I can tell, having only one trading day and no previous open interest only affects someone trying to sell a contract they are holding.  Meaning that if you only have one day to sell your contract then you need to offer it 'at market' or at the bid price (or even lower than the bid price). If you cannot sell your contract then you have to let it expire worthless or you have to exercise it. Those are your three options: let it expire, sell it (perhaps at a loss), and exercise it.  Edit: be careful about holding an in-the-money option. Many brokers will automatically exercise an in-the-money contract if you hold it till expiration date. "In the United States, regulation of broker dealer credit is dictated by Regulation T, that for a non-margin account, 100% of a trade must be funded. FINRA has supplemented that regulation with an anti-""free rider"" rule, Rule 4210(f)(9), which reads No member shall permit a customer (other than a broker-dealer or a “designated     account”) to make a practice, directly or indirectly, of effecting transactions in a cash     account where the cost of securities purchased is met by the sale of the same securities.     No member shall permit a customer to make a practice of selling securities with them in a     cash account which are to be received against payment from another broker-dealer where     such securities were purchased and are not yet paid for. A member transferring an     account which is subject to a Regulation T 90-day freeze to another member firm shall     inform the receiving member of such 90-day freeze. It is only funds from uncleared sold equities that are prohibited from being used to purchase securities. This means that an equity in one's account that is settled can be sold and can be purchased only with settled funds.  Once the amount required to purchase is in excess of the amount of settled funds, no more purchases can be made, so an equity sold by an account with settled funds can be repurchased immediately with the settled funds so long as the settled funds can fund the purchase. Margin A closed position is not considered a ""long"" or ""short"" since it is an account with one loan of security and one asset of security and one cash loan and one cash liability with the excess or deficit equity equal to any profit or loss, respectively, thus unexposed to the market, only to the creditworthiness of the clearing & settling chain. Only open positions are considered ""longs"" or ""shorts"", a ""long"" being a possession of a security, and a ""short"" being a liability, because they are exposed to the market. Since unsettled funds are not considered ""longs"" or ""shorts"", they are not encumbered by previous trades, thus only the Reg T rules apply to new and current positions. Cash vs Margin A cash account cannot purchase with unsettled funds.  A margin account can.  This means that a margin account could theoretically do an infinite amount of trades using unsettled funds.  A cash account's daily purchases are restricted to the amount of settled funds, so once those are exhausted, no more purchases can be made. The opposite is true for cash accounts as well.  Unsettled securities cannot be sold either. In summation, unsettled assets can not be traded in a cash account." "For stock options, where I'm used to seeing these terms: Volume is usually reported per day, whereas open interest is cumulative. In addition, some volume closes positions and some opens positions.  For example, if I am long one contract and sell it to someone who was short one contract, then that adds to volume and reduces open interest.  If I hold no contracts and sell (creating a short position) to someone who also had no contracts, then I add to volume and I increase open interest. EDIT: With the clarification in your comment, then I would say some people opened and closed positions in that one day.  Their opening and closing trades both contribute to ""volume"" but they have not net position in the ""open interest.""" The last column in the source data is volume (the number of stocks that was exchanged during the day), and it also has a value of zero for that day, meaning that nobody bought or sold the stocks on that day. And since the prices are prices of transactions (the first and the last one on a particular day, and the ones with the highest/lowest price), the prices cannot be established, and are irrelevant as there was not a single transaction on that day. Only the close price is assumed equal to its previous day counterpart because this is the most important value serving as a basis to determine the daily price change (and we assume no change in this case). Continuous-line charts also use this single value. Bar and candle charts usually display a blank space for a day where no trade occurred.