>> Yeah, they want to sell TO YOU at the distribution top, sucker.
‘Unprecedented’: Wall Street Ponders Goldman’s Block-Trade Spree
As Wall Street speculated on the identity of the mysterious seller behind the massive $10.5 billion in block trades executed on Friday by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., investors also pondered just how unprecedented the selloff was -- and whether there’s more to come.
The sales lit up trader chat rooms from New York to Hong Kong and were part of an extraordinary spree that erased $35 billion from the values of bellwether stocks ranging from Chinese technology giants to U.S. media conglomerates.
“I’ve never seen something of this magnitude in my 25-year career,” said Michel Keusch, portfolio manager at Bellevue Asset Management AG in Switzerland.
Goldman sold $6.6 billion worth of shares of Baidu Inc., Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Vipshop Holdings Ltd. before the market opened in the U.S., according to an email to clients seen by Bloomberg News. That move was followed by the sale of $3.9 billion of shares in ViacomCBS Inc., Discovery Inc., Farfetch Ltd., iQiyi Inc. and GSX Techedu Inc., the email said.
Block trades -- the sale of a large chunk of stock at a price sometimes negotiated outside of the market -- are common, but the size of these trades and the multiple blocks hitting the market during the normal trading hours aren’t.
“This was highly unusual,” said Oliver Pursche, a senior vice president at Wealthspire Advisors, which manages $12 billion in assets. “The question now is: Are they done? Is this over? Or come Monday and Tuesday, are markets are going to be hit by another wave of block trades?”
bloomberg.com |
