Dark pools were another rogue spawn of the new financial marketplace. Private stock exchanges, run by the big brokers, they were not required to reveal to the public what happened inside them. They reported any trade they executed, but they did so with sufficient delay that it was impossible to know exactly what was happening in the broader market at the moment the trade occurred.
Dark pools emerged as a controversial feature of modern finance, representing private stock exchanges managed by major brokerage firms. These platforms operated away from the public eye, leading to concerns about transparency in trading. Although they did report trades afterward, the delay meant that market participants could not fully gauge the real-time activities within these dark pools, undermining the overall visibility of market dynamics.
The existence of dark pools highlights a significant shift in the financial marketplace, where information asymmetry became more pronounced. By keeping trading details confidential for a time, these exchanges contributed to the increasing complexity and opacity of market operations, leading to questions about fairness and the integrity of price-setting processes in the stock market.
