This paper combines daily buy and sell institutional trading volume with all news announcements from Reuters. Using institutional order flow (buy volume minus sell volume) we find a variety of evidence that institutions are informed. Institutional trading volume predicts the occurrence of news announcements. Institutional order flow predicts (i) the sentiment of the news; (ii) the stock market reaction on news announcement days; (iii) the stock market reaction on crisis news days; and (iv) earnings announcement surprises. These results suggest that significant price discovery related to news stories occurs through institutional trading prior to the news announcement date.

Over‐the‐counter (OTC) markets dominate trading in many asset classes. Will electronic trading displace traditional OTC “voice” trading? Can electronic and voice systems coexist? What types of securities and trades are best suited for electronic trading? We study these questions by focusing on an innovation in electronic trading technology that enables investors to simultaneously search many bond dealers. We show that periodic one‐sided electronic auctions are a viable and important source of liquidity even in inactively traded instruments. These mechanisms are a natural compromise between bilateral search in OTC markets and continuous double auctions in electronic limit order books.