Block trade
A trade in a large block of securities whose terms are agreed outside the central order book.
A block trade is the transfer of a large block of securities from one specific holder to one specific buyer at a price the two parties agreed before the order reaches the exchange. The exchange is not used to find a counterparty but to register and settle the trade: the two sides' orders match on price and size and are executed against each other without ever meeting anyone else's orders in the order book.
How a block is put together and locked in
The counterparty is found by a broker, through its client base or its trading desk. The price is pegged to a benchmark, either the weighted average price over a period, calculated as VWAP, or the price of the latest auction, with an agreed discount or premium in favour of the buyer or the seller. The trade is executed as a negotiated trade: the order specifies the code of a particular counterparty, so no other participant can accept it. If both sides are clients of the same broker, the broker matches them internally, and the result is a cross trade. From there the process is the usual one: clearing calculates the obligations, and the securities and cash change hands on the settlement date.
Whether a block can be moved in one piece depends on how liquid the security is. In an instrument with a thin order book, a buyer for the whole size has to be won over with a price concession, and the shallower the market depth, the larger that concession becomes. This is why block trades cluster in securities with high liquidity, the same names that lead by turnover:
| # | Security | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | VKCOVK International Public JS Com | 48.16 bn RUB |
| 2 | SBERSberbank | 10.92 bn RUB |
| 3 | GAZPGazprom | 9.00 bn RUB |
As of trading date: 02/11/2026
Where the name misleads
A block trade is often confused with a major transaction, a corporate category under the joint-stock companies law that concerns approval of a deal by the company's governing bodies, not the mechanics of execution on an exchange. The similar-sounding names are the only thing the two have in common.
The second mistake is to read the block price as a market level. That price is the outcome of a private agreement between two parties and may differ from the quote at the same moment; no conclusion about a new valuation of the security can be drawn from it. Nor does a large-volume print appearing on the time and sales signal a surge in demand: demand of that size was not sitting in the order book, otherwise the block would not have had to be placed as a negotiated trade. The trade does not reveal the seller's motive either: a holder exiting, an asset being moved between related entities and a portfolio rebalancing all look the same on the tape.
How to read the number
A block is executed so that the volume does not pass through the order book and move the price along the way; it shows up on the tape as a single print rather than a long series of trades.