ITG, an electronic brokerage that trades more than 4 billion U.S. shares a month, has admitted to running a secret trading desk that took advantage of its clients. The firm runs what's known as a dark pool – a place for funds to place massive orders to buy or sell shares without making them known to the market until after the fact. Secrecy is the whole point. If other traders know there's a big buyer of shares out there, they'll push up the price before the fund can close its order. The SEC complaint filed today said ITG set up an in-house team - dubbed Project Omega - that saw those "secret" orders and took ... (full story)