The practice whereby an order is not offered in the trading pit or ring, but is matched by a broker on the other side of the trade. This involves taking the opposite side of an order placed by a customer, into the broker’s own account (or any other account run by the broker) without exposing the order to competitive bidding during normal trading hours.

The broker does not release the order to the market or open outcry system.

This practice is illegal as the broker hopes to gain from an offsetting transaction at a later time, without going through the official market venues.

Bucketing is classified as direct bucketing and indirect bucketing.