Hi Glorieux,
Todays trade of 216,000 shares would apprear to an agreed upon cross trade between two parties excuted by the same manager.
Let me give you an example. Last November, EQN on the TSX traded 10X's it's normal volume with no change in price that included a very big and large cross trade. link: http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=eqn... In the middle of the chart you will see two large smoke stacks with the first one having the large cross trade having zero effect on price followed by a second smoke stack with a nice move up in SP. There are many reasons for a cross trade, but allow me to share one comment that came from Mark Leibovit or VRtrader who I asked a very similar question as you framed: Marks response was as follows: "Usually, large blocks are crossed ahead of an important trend change in the security." As you can see the trend change was a very nice pop up in price about 10 days later. Is that we can expect in NOT? Hum...
Also Cross trades are usually done within the same brokerage (in this case MS) firm to eliminate the spreads between the buy and ask. (in other words the trade does not occur on the markets as you and I would buy any security) Many people are not happy with Cross Trades as it may not be in our best interest by not following the normal competitive bid/ask process, but they are not illegal to do and must satisfiy all SEC requirements.
