General Discussion, page-5622

Hey Gurus,
can someone actually explain what a cross trade is. I get it when someone has a hand wavey explanation that a broker has a buy and a sell order, and they take the mid point, so on the surface that makes sense, but what does it really mean in practice, how does it really work, and what does that tell us about who is trading?? So, has someone tried to buy at 2.1 and someone else has tried to sell at 2.0 cents, so the buyer pays a little less, and the seller gets a little more??? Is that what is happening with this mid point calculation? Surely the buyer is not paying more than they wanted, and the seller is getting less then they asked. Or did they both ask for "at market price", and thus got the mid point?
Most of the trading up to the last 45 minutes were cross trades today...

I assume me using Comsec or any other retail platform, putting a buy or sell order won't result in one of these CXXT transactions????
It sounds more like two traders at one broker are trading with each other. Possibly they know each other, and this is a trade in a market manipulation sort of way??? How else do you explain these 53 or 57cent trades?? What is the point of that other than trying to trigger someone (or something) to make a trade...