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$SPY - I didn't want to share this trade for reasons I will explain below, but some of the comments are making me cringe. So I'm getting involved...and I hope I don't regret it.

First - some context. I'm big on context.

VL has trade data going back to 2004. At ~$6.5B, I can confirm this is the largest trade in the VL dataset as measured in dollars.

If you want to get technical and measure trade size in terms of volume, it ranks #36. We measure in dollars though, and that's where @TLAMB91 got his #1 ranking.

But here's one reason (among others) that dollars is the preferred measure of size over shares.

If you look more closely at the data, you'll see what *might* be construed as swaps between instruments that are nearly identical. In this case, I'm speaking of $SPY, $SPYM, $VOO, and $IVV.

These instruments vary a bit in terms expense ratios and structure. But their holdings are essentially the same. Beginning last week, astute observers in the VL Discord started to notice that some of the DP trades arriving among these instruments were:

a) Very close in value (dollars)
b) Reported minutes, or sometimes seconds apart
c) Unusually large.

While it can't be proven that institutions are swapping one instrument for another, it's suspicious behavior. Image three shows some of the recent pairs. Also, it's important to note that these trade values are not exact matches down to the penny. But they're really close when talking about multi-billion dollar trades. If institutions are indeed swapping, the deltas can be handled in smaller trades to balance things out. Those smaller trades would be inconsequential in size.

That brings us back to today.

Today we had more of the same. A few near-exact matches between $SPY and $IVV and then $IVV and $VOO. And that leads us to the #1 $SPY trade that has everybody's attention.

If you do some quick back-of-the-napkin math, #1 $SPY is valued at ~$6.48B. Meanwhile we also got a #1 $IVV trade at $4.68B and a #2 $SPYM at ~$1.8B.

4.68B + 1.81B is pretty close to 6.5B. Big shoutout to VL Front Runner Matt (yikesbud.) for catching this one.

Does it mean these swaps happened? No.
Can I prove it? No.
Do I know which instrument they're going into or out of? No.
Is there a reason you should give a shit? Possibly.

Now we get into the why part of this exercise. Why would institutions swap one for another when it's essentially the same thing. There's a long(er) answer in the VL Discord that goes into much more detail. You can go ask your LLM of choice if you want and you'll probably get a similar answer. But in my opinion it boils down to two categories.

1 - Taxes, fees, expenses, wash sales, or anything else that helps the books look a little better or meet some kind of regulatory criteria. I'm not an accountant and this is the less interesting scenario. It's essentially neutral from a directional standpoint and just helps institutions do a little housekeeping. These are the $IVV <--> $VOO trades in my opinion.

2 - Seeking liquidity (presumably for the purposes of distribution). This is the more interesting scenario. Again I offer it with 1000 caveats and lots of fine print and disclaimers.

**IF** institutions are moving OUT OF a "buy and hold" instrument with lower fees like $VOO, $IVV, or $SPYM and INTO an instrument like $SPY that has slightly higher fees, but is far more liquid, one reason could be because it's just a lot easier to unload many billions of dollars of $SPY in 100-lot shares than it is to unload many billions of dollars of $VOO, for example.

$SPY averages 50-60M shares per day.
$VOO averages 8M/Day. $IVV 9M/Day. $SPYM 14M/Day.

So step one is to get out of $IVV and into $SPY. Step two is to offload all that $SPY to willing buyers at the current fair market price.

There's also an option 3. It's less likely in my opinion, but I'll say it anyway. Option 3 is they are moving FROM $SPY to $IVV for the purposes of holding for the long run.

Can't rule it out.
But I think it's pretty stupid to do that sort of operation here within an earshot of ATH. If they've been buying $SPY for the last several weeks and only now have decided they enough to park it in $VOO and let it ride - well that'd surprise me. A lot has happened since the March lows. Price has come a long way.

Whatever they're doing, I imagine it's part of a broader process and I don't expect those actions to reflect in price tonight or tomorrow. Quarterly OPEX is on Thursday and given how much repositioning they tend to do on these dates, I don't expect price to veer too far away from where it is now until after that's behind us.

In conclusion, some donkey who thinks he's original and funny is going to slide into the comments and say "so you're saying anything is possible. Got it. Thanks."

And another is going to say "buy or sell?" knowing how much it triggers me.

And another is going to say "this is too much to read, but I'm happy for you or sorry that happened."

Then a handful of trolls will take their swings.

So let's just get all that nonsense out of the way first.

You're all hilarious. All of your internet quips land. They are not recycled or unoriginal. You were definitely the one who said it first.

Also -

You all have 20 hot girlfriends.
You're all the best trader that ever lived.
You called it, nailed it, and told us so.

Other more well-meaning commenters will say "it's definitely [bullish/bearish] because of [FOMC / OPEX / Geopolitics / Macro / $SPCX / Warsh / Trump / Iran / Oil / Gold / $BTC / Bonds / Yen / etc. etc.]

Maybe?

Shit, man. I don't know. I'm just talking about a few trades that I thought might be worth sharing. Overlay this information with all the other things you track and maybe it'll help you form a trade (or avoid taking a bad one). What you do with your money is up to you.

At the end of the day, there is a pretty substantial amount of inventory changing hands for reasons that we will never know. All we can do is prepare, observe how price responds and react accordingly.

Additional context on the site.
https://t.co/i5V7d5Evfk