RE: Buys showing as sells9 Apr 2024 13:13
It's been asked a million times, but basically there is no such thing as buys and sells. There are trades, and for every trade there is a buyer and a seller. But what most traders are interested in is just one side of the trade, whether other traders are buying or selling from the brokers/MMs. Websites like this one often show a list of 'buys' and 'sells' but it's just the product of an algorithm that logs the time stamp of each deal and the market mid price for the share at that time (allowing that different MMs offer/ask different prices). If the actual trade is above the mid price then it shows a 'buy', if it's below then it shows a 'sell'. Sometimes the algo gets that wrong, especially if the spread is narrow, but overall it's inconsequential and the algo is a reasonably reliable guide.