RE: Buy or sell?.....10 Jul 2019 19:35
It is frustrating, but my understanding is that under MiFID II, trades only need to be published on execution with the 'basics' such as a stock identifier, price, quantity (plus a few other incidentals such as exact date and time, currency and a unique trade ID). No buy or sell indicator is required at this stage.
There are millions of trades daily across different exchanges, different markets, etc which is why this can only be shown on a best efforts basis so that sites such as this can reflect them and this data needs to be in the public domain within 15 minutes (hence a lot of sites showing delayed data).
This is being done by multiple entities across multiple platforms, none of which will communicate directly with each other.
The full details of the trade including the buyer and seller details only need to be reported to the regulator within a T+1 timeframe. This will be done by these different entities/platforms, but are submitted in a standardised format, so the regulator (FCA) will have a complete record).
Not very interesting, but this is why it is not possible to state for certain which direction a trade is (unless it is your own one).
gla