Bulk and block deals

Two kinds of large trade that Indian exchanges disclose publicly. A bulk deal is any trading day on which one party buys or sells more than 0.5% of a company's listed shares, and the names are published the same evening. A block deal is a single large trade, above a minimum size the regulator sets, executed in a separate trading window, and it is published too.

A promoter or a private equity fund leaving usually shows up here first. Picture a company with 40 crore shares. If one fund sells 1.2 crore of them in a day, that's a bulk deal of 3% of its equity.

Bulk and block deal disclosures name the buyer as well as the seller, which is the useful part. A large mutual fund taking the stock is a different signal from an entity nobody has heard of.

Look up who bought.