I'll take a shot at it -- corrections and other comments would be welcomed.
There are several different types of unlisted trading. Most OTC-BBs these days trade with real-time bid and ask. The Pink Sheets, published daily at the close by the National Quotation Bureau, list MMs and closing prices only for NASDAQ stocks, BB stocks' MMs with their individual bids and offers, and other stocks that have not been approved to trade on the BB. For the latter, you generally can't get a quote on them in mid-day without calling the MM. I think there also can be BB stocks that are not approved for real-time bid/ask quoting. Finally, there's the so-called "gray market," where you find unofficial and possibly technically illegal trading in stocks that don't have official bid/ask quotes at any time -- typically, the stocks whose trading is halted by the SEC show up here occasionally (RMIL, CENL, GRNO, and others with no official SEC-registered MMs). I think PEAFF is in this last category at the moment -- even though it hasn't been "halted," it never began trading in the US officially, which is sort of the same thing. It's just somehow trading through unapproved channels. WIEN is the only approved MM, and I don't think any of that volume was theirs. If you look up CENL and GRNO, you'll see a little volume listed, and the trades print on Bloomberg's time-and-sales screen, but with no bid/ask. PEAFF is even weirder because there are no individual trades recorded, just the end-of-day volume. Hope this helps more than it confuses . |
