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Proprietary trading is a term used in investment banking to describe when the firm's traders actively trade stocks, bonds, options, commodities, or other items with its own money as opposed to its customers' money, so as to make a profit for itself. Although investment banks are usually defined as businesses which assist other business in raising money in the capital markets (by selling stocks or bonds), in fact most (cf. stock brokerage companies) are more likely to be involved in a scenario where a customer wants to sell a large amount of stock, which if sold through a stock broker couldn't be sold all at once and could possibly trigger a decline in the value due to flooding the market. The Investment Bank would agree to buy the entire amount of stock at a discount with the belief that it could sell pieces over time. The profit comes from selling the stock at present value but buying it at a discount. This is known as block trading. In the bond and other over-the-counter markets, it is much more likely that an investment bank will be a middleman in the transaction, holding the security for a period and attempting to make a profit from the small difference between what it bought it for and what it sold it for. For this reason the majority of trading profits usually comes from bond and commodity trading (often four times as much).