What differentiates the institutional investor from the retail investor is the large block buys the institutional investor makes. While individuals and small groups comprise the retail sector, banks, mutual funds and other “elephants” make up the institutional sector.
Institutional Volume
According to StreetAuthority.com, “On any given day, institutions usually account for the vast majority of the trading volume on major exchanges such as the NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ.”
Retail Volume
Streetauthority.com states, “Retail investing activity pales in the shadow of institutional investing activity. Not only do retail investors make smaller trades, they also tend to trade less frequently than institutional investors, which account for most of the market's trading volume.”
Greater Resources
The institutional investor has enormous resources to aid in making investment decisions. When an institution decides to buy large blocks of shares in a company retail buyers typically follow suit.
Elephants
An elephant is an institution with enough funds to make large volume trades. As explained by Investopedia, “Think of a swimming pool: if an elephant steps into the pool (buys into a position), the water level (stock price) increases; if the elephant gets out of the pool (sells a position), the water level (stock price) decreases. In comparison to the elephant's influence on stock prices, the effect of an individual investor is more like that of a mouse.”
Other Differences
Because institutional investors are considered more educated in the financial market, they are subjected to fewer SEC regulations than the retail investor.
References
Writer Bio
From 2002-2006, Kenneth Hamlett was publisher and head writer for UNSIGNED Music Magazine, an online publication with over 100,000 readers. Prior to establishing UNSIGNED, Hamlett was a business solutions analyst and spent 15 years formulating and writing proposals for supply chain business solutions. He is a graduate of the New York Institute of Photography.