A crossing network is an ATS (Alternative Trading System

Alternative Trading Systems

Alternative Trading Systems , are United States Securities and Exchange Commission approved non-exchange trading venues specifically designed to match buyers and sellers to find counterparties for transactions, instead of trading large blocks of shares on the normal exchange, a practice that can...

) that matches buy and sell orders electronically for execution without first routing the order to an exchange or other displayed market, such as an ECN (Electronic Communication Network

Electronic Communication Network

An electronic communication network is the term used in financial circles for a type of computer system that facilitates trading of financial products outside of stock exchanges. The primary products that are traded on ECNs are stocks and currencies. The first ECN, Instinet, was created in 1969...

), which displays a public quote. Instead, the order is either anonymously placed into a black box or flagged to other participants of the crossing network. The advantage of the crossing network is the ability to execute a large block order without impacting the public quote.

Examples of crossing networks would be Liquidnet, Pipeline, ITG's Posit or Goldman Sachs' SIGMA X.