Level II does not specify between long and short sales. Certain proprietarily offered front ends may offer that type of information, though offhand I can't think of how.
I generally, knowing the mechanics of short selling, consider sales that take place at 1/16 over the bid to have a good likelihood of being short sales. Also, when I see an issue that is trending widely on an intraday basis (usually event driven), I consider most prints that are under the market at the pauses in or ends of runs to be short prints.
For example, if an issue is quoted 20-1/8, and it starts to run on news, somewhere in the 21 1/2-5/8 (arbitrary) area it might pause and show a few 1 or 1 1/8 prints before running up to 22+; I generally assume that those are retail market short prints.
In the same manner, if this same stock hit 22 1/2, and then backed off to 22 1/4, I'd more-or-less automatically assume that the 2 5/8 or 3/4 prints were retail market long orders.
That's just my assessment, though. I'm sometimes wrong, but never in doubt. ;)
LPS5 |
