Who’s looking at your trades?

July 14th, 2010

This is a somewhat complicated question that depends largely on the situation you find yourself in. Much like the stock market or investment markets themselves, certain people are privy to certain types of information. But let’s say you bought a share of Microsoft (MSFT) yesterday. Who can see that you did that?

  1. On the most immediate level, you can. You can view your purchase in your account register.
  2. Your financial advisor or private banker can also see the trade because she or he has access to your account.
  3. Things start to get a bit impersonal here: theoretically, the bank or brokerage house that you are associated with can see that one more share of Microsoft was bought for one of their customers.
  4. The market will most likely not be affected with the purchase of your one share, but since it is technically the most recent sale, for a little while (we’re talking less than a second) your purchase will be the last visible sale of MSFT which is visible to anyone who is looking at MSFT at that moment.

The long and the short of it is that only you and your financial advisor/ institution can see that YOU personally bought a share of MSFT; the rest of the world can only see that one share of MSFT was bought by someone, somewhere. The identity of the purchaser is confidential information.

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