UT trade is official closing price1 Dec 2018 01:50
What really happens at 4.30 when the market closes is the "closing auction" ( if there are any potential trades left on the book), anyone at this point with Direct Market Access including joe public can enter their bids/offers for the stock, from here lets call them buys and sells, its easier.
What the SETS system is trying to do is give the official closing MID price for the days trading.
The participants have 5 minutes to enter what price they will pay for or be prepared to sell their stock for at this point, no-one is trading here, just entering. Furthermore, their entries have to be within 5% of the last AT trade of the day. If the last AT trade was at 16.5p, the range for the entries of proposed buys and sells must fall between 15.675 - 17.325p.
After 5 mins and all the entries are in, the SETS computer swings into action, and what it does is calculate from the entries the HIGHEST VOLUME trades that can be made, the MOST shares it can UNCROSS from one side of the book to the other. It is literally "matching" any trade that will trade at the prices on the book, if you see what I mean? This takes up to 30 secs above the 5 min auction.
The resultant figure becomes the UT ( uncrossing Trade) for the day and the official days closing MID price...which in our example .. 16.35.14..... 1750000 @ 17p....UT.
So the UT you see every evening at something like 16.35.+30secs is NOT a BUY, is NOT a SELL.. but half and half, it is a Volume figure. It is recorded as a buy or sell like all trades are: a guess based on which side of the "last mid" it is.
The 17p official closing price is then taken forward to the OPENING auction at 7.50am the next day where the city johnnies do the whole auction thing again to give an opening price at 8.00am.
Hope this helps…
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