"black markets"

Reader comment on: New York Times on Financial Regulation

Submitted by J.Johnson (United States), Jul 16, 2010 10:04

I would usually be the last person to come to the defense of the NYT, but in this case I think the reporters meant "dark" instead of "black." Commonly used terms for the huge off-exchange trading systems are "dark market" and "dark pool," among others. These are trading venues where the buyers and sellers are anonymous and the trades are 'matched' together by the dark pool market makers, such as Goldman Sachs and others. The NYT has displayed an astonishing ignorance of the tremendous importance of these markets in recent years, given that they now handle more trades than the 'non-dark' open markets in stocks, commodities and derivatives.

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