Inside the hedge fund/broker relationship

The investigation of whether broker dealers tip hedge funds off to big block trades has generated a lot of attention. Which raises a question: Is there any way for a mutual fund to keep a big trade from leaking out. Fortune offers a hypothetical blow by blow. Say a trader at a big broker-dealer gets an order from a mutual fund and enters the firm's order system. Sales staff get the order and start finding a buyer or seller. But to curry favor with a big client, he could tip them off first, giving them a chance to buy or sell before the block trades hit. Alternatively, tipped-off traders might be able to use the information to their strategic advantage in other ways without resorting to out and out front-running. These sorts of practices have been whispered about for years. We're about to find out how true they are.

For more:
- here's the article at CNN