T-trades like those are cover transactions being reported to the tape as net trades. What that means is that a large holder had their broker selling ‘against’ a block position all day long...smaller trades that won’t tank the pps. Those trades are all done as “short sales” and then, at the end of the day, the broker covers from their client’s block position. The reason the “cover” hits the tape is because it is done at 98.5% of the pps of the sales during the day. The broker pockets the 1.5% difference as a fee. And since the pps of the second or “offsetting” leg is different than the initial or first legs of the the transactions they have to get reported to the tape as a “net trade”. Normally broker/dealers don’t need to report the second or offsetting leg of a transaction (actually before 1999 the OTC would report both legs of every transaction and thus the volume was always double the actual number of trades).
In the case of the t-trades today just divide the t-trade pps by 0.985 and see what you get. It doesn’t usually come out clean like that pps wise because the sales during the day can be at many different prices...and they use the VWAP to calculate the t-trade price.
Also, those trades also are double counting the volume. If you subtract that type of t-trade volume you can get the open market trades during the day as those t-trades are not open market. That helps to understand just how much % wise those trades represent of the open market volume during the day.
And lastly, the reason those trades are usually dilution is retail rarely uses block position sales to sell...mostly because of the 1.5% fee. Only sophisticated large holders, penny financiers, or those holding significant discounted stock are likely to use that method.
Hope that helps.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
