What is the best place to see trades bought and sold of funds and shares and news?

isayhello

I'd like to view the trades that have been made for a share, bought and sold in a day or the last few hours but I haven't been able to find something that's easy to understand. On the LSE site I could see trading volumes for some shares but it was a limited amount and I couldn't tell if they were buys or sells.

For news on funds and shares I've been looking at the pages on HL which have been useful.

I'm a newbie to learning about this stuff and wondered if more experienced folks have suggestions they use?

thanks

Thrugelmir

isayhello said:

I'd like to view the trades that have been made for a share, bought and sold in a day or the last few hours but I haven't been able to find something that's easy to understand. On the LSE site I could see trading volumes for some shares but it was a limited amount and I couldn't tell if they were buys or sells.

For somebody to buy then someone sells, and vice a versa. Trading takes two parties. 

eskbanker

isayhello said:

On the LSE site I could see trading volumes for some shares but it was a limited amount and I couldn't tell if they were buys or sells.

Every trade is both, since by definition there's a seller and a buyer in each transaction!

isayhello

Thanks and this might be a silly question but how can you tell from trades when a stock is doing badly then, for instance many investors want to sell? because it sounds like it will always balance out with people buying it then.

Any recommendations for news on funds and shares would be great too thanks. 

wmb194

isayhello said:

Thanks and this might be a silly question but how can you tell from trades when a stock is doing badly then, for instance many investors want to sell? because it sounds like it will always balance out with people buying it then.

Any recommendations for news on funds and shares would be great too thanks. 

The LSE itself doesn't collect the data on whether the trade was a buy or a sell but data providers using its data will make a guess on whether it's a buy or a sell based upon how close the traded price is to the bid or the offer at the time the trade was reported. Sometimes you'll see '?' when the price was right in the middle of the spread and a guess cannot be made.

This sort of data with lots of chart analysis used to be available for free via Digital Look's website - now named Sharecast - but with a quick look I cannot see whether it's still there but you might have more luck.

Advfn won't give much away for free and its website is horrible but it might have some of the data you're looking for, e.g., late trades for Vodafone with a guess for the total balance of buy and sell volume at any particular point in time.  https://uk.advfn.com/p.php?pid=trades&mode=html5

GeoffTF

wmb194 said:

isayhello said:

Thanks and this might be a silly question but how can you tell from trades when a stock is doing badly then, for instance many investors want to sell? because it sounds like it will always balance out with people buying it then.

Any recommendations for news on funds and shares would be great too thanks. 

The LSE itself doesn't collect the data on whether the trade was a buy or a sell but data providers using its data will make a guess on whether it's a buy or a sell based upon how close the traded price is to the bid or the offer at the time the trade was reported.

That may make sense if the trade is through a market maker, but that just adds to or takes from the market maker's inventory. The size of that inventory has to be managed. Purchases and sales of shares ultimately have to be balanced by the market maker's customers. It is also possible to trade via the order book, in an auction or off market.

In answer to the OPs question, if a stock is doing badly some of the holders of that stock will be keen to sell and may not be too fussy about the price they get. If the potential buyers are less keen, and will only buy if the price is right, the price at which deals are done will fall.

Level 2 access allows you to see the orders in the order book. That gives more information about what is happening in the market, but you have to pay for that.

mears1

isayhello are you trying to gauge which are the most sold funds in a day, and price is dropping so that you will buy into them?

GeoffTF

It is worth adding that the "dark pools" exist to allow the big boys to trade outside public scrutiny. iWeb has sometimes offered me the option of trading on the LSE or at a better price on "an unregulated exchange".

Brokers sometimes used to show what were their most bought and most sold stocks, A number of studies have found that the stocks that retail investors buy do worse on average than the stocks that they sell. I saw an article that suggested that the likes of Robin Hood get paid for order flow partly because it is valuable to know what the dumb money is doing.

wmb194

GeoffTF said:

wmb194 said:

isayhello said:

Thanks and this might be a silly question but how can you tell from trades when a stock is doing badly then, for instance many investors want to sell? because it sounds like it will always balance out with people buying it then.

Any recommendations for news on funds and shares would be great too thanks. 

The LSE itself doesn't collect the data on whether the trade was a buy or a sell but data providers using its data will make a guess on whether it's a buy or a sell based upon how close the traded price is to the bid or the offer at the time the trade was reported.

That may make sense if the trade is through a market maker, but that just adds to or takes from the market maker's inventory. The size of that inventory has to be managed. Purchases and sales of shares ultimately have to be balanced by the market maker's customers. It is also possible to trade via the order book, in an auction or off market.

That's not relevant, all I'm talking about is how the trades reported to the LSE are interpreted. It doesn't matter whether it's via a market maker, matched bargain or anything else. If you watch live trade data it's done on the fly.

Thrugelmir

GeoffTF said:

I saw an article that suggested that the likes of Robin Hood get paid for order flow partly because it is valuable to know what the dumb money is doing.

Robinhood does not operate in the UK. The regulatory regime in the US is very different. Direct comparisons are as a result meaningless. 

wmb194

GeoffTF said:

It is worth adding that the "dark pools" exist to allow the big boys to trade outside public scrutiny. iWeb has sometimes offered me the option of trading on the LSE or at a better price on "an unregulated exchange".

Brokers sometimes used to show what were their most bought and most sold stocks, A number of studies have found that the stocks that retail investors buy do worse on average than the stocks that they sell. I saw an article that suggested that the likes of Robin Hood get paid for order flow partly because it is valuable to know what the dumb money is doing.

Some still do. De Giro sends a monthly e-mail:

Payment for order flow is illegal in the UK, Canada and most if not all of continental Europe.