[thaumasiotes]

> In your neighbor's house example, it would be like if there was a street market auction for trading cards happening in your neighbor's front yard, but in the house your neighbor and another neighbor had gotten together to trade 100x the average #of cards using the prices they hear from outside, and the people outside only see the deal they made after it's done.

Isn't that how everything is traded? Am I supposed to be outraged that everything I buy retail also exists in a wholesale market?

[oangemangut]

For these institutional traders, the pools offer them opportunities to trade with a small set of counter parties that also have deep deep liquidity, so in a sense it is kind of like the wholesale markets for retail. Orders hit the book in the pool and they don't have to worry about 'current retail' stock and can trade massive blocks with trade certainty.