Is there anyway to buy and sell stocks anonymously online?
Anonymous online brokerages?
It would have to be online..
how anonymous would it be? etc.

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by leapinglizard-ga on 21 Sep 2004 13:39 PDT

It depends on what you mean by anonymity. Do you want to purchase
stocks that are not registered in your name? Or do wish to perform a
transaction such that not even the stock brokerage knows who you are?
I have difficulty imagining how the latter would be possible.
Furthermore, are you interested in stocks issued on any market? One
well-known stock market is the New York Stock Exchange, but there are
also the American Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Over-The-Counter (OTC)
stocks, foreign stock exchanges, and so on.

leapinglizard

Hi there Gerth-ga,

Anonymous trading refers to:
"Visible bids and offers on the market without the identity of the
bidder and seller being revealed."
as defined by Investopia.com

Anonymous trading is usually done by high profile investors, primarily
to execute transactions without the scrutiny and speculation of the
market.
However, recently, anonymous trading is becoming more and more
accessible due to online brokers that allow direct access to such high
profiles services.

Anonymous trading is generally done either through having an
alternative identifier that keeps all other information about you
hidden (ie a Market Participant Identifier MPID) or having a service
provider represent your order without exposing any personal details. 
You cannot hide your information from the brokerage but you can remain
anonymous to the rest of the market.

=========================================================================
All NYSE®, AMEX®, PCX® and OTC listed stocks
=========================================================================

For all NYSE®, AMEX®, PCX® and OTC listed stocks, you can choose a
direct access broker that route orders through ArcaEx to place
anonymous orders.
A list of the brokers you can use to directly access ArcaEx is
available on the following page (a great majority of them are online
brokers as you requested):
http://www.tradearca.com/traders/direct_access.asp


ArcaEdge allows anonymous order representation for up to 999,900 shares.  
For more information about ArcaEx, please refer to:
http://www.tradearca.com/traders

For a complete list of eligible stocks, please refer to this page:  
http://www.tradearca.com/traders/stocks.asp




=========================================================================
NASDAQ
=========================================================================

For NASDAQ, their new platform SuperMontage has a fully anonymous
trading feature which was recently approved by the SEC.  The full
anonymity feature is expected to be available for the entire NASDAQ
National Market and NASDAQ Small Cap Market by Monday, October 6.
http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader/News/2003/headtraderalerts/hta2003-125.stm 

For the latest information on how full anonymity works and its
benefits, please refer to this fact sheet:
http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader/hottopics/supermontage/anonymityFactSheet.pdf


Your broker can connect to the NASDAQ SuperMontage in a variety of ways:
"FIX protocol connecting through:
	A direct connection to NASDAQ on a FIX circuit. 
	A direct connection to NASDAQ on an existing CTCI circuit. 
	A third-party private network, or Extranet. (NASDAQ currently
supports SAVVIS, Radianz and TNS.)
	A Service Bureau that is connected to NASDAQ via FIX.
 
 Computer-to-computer interface (CTCI) ? supports only non-directed orders 

 Service delivery platform (SDP), connecting to:
	Application programming interface (API) 
	NASDAQ Workstation II® presentation device (PD)

 Service bureaus
	Most service bureaus offer SuperMontage functionality"
Quoted from
http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader/tradingservices/productservices/productdescriptions/smdescription.stm


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I hope you the information was helpful; if you would like
clarification on any part of the answer, please let me know and I will
do my best to keep working with you until you are satisfied.

Best regards,
Tox-ga