odd lotn.

1858 N.Y. Times 26 Apr. 5/1 A sale of imported goods of every description, in odd lots, took place yesterday.

1869 Sci. Amer. 6 Feb. 91/2 Just as time is gained in the collection of the live parcels, so will it be in their delivery—by their getting out in batches instead of being dropped here and there in odd lots.

1897 Sears, Roebuck Catal. No. 104. 173/1 The pants are not the size to fit the coats and vests. We then throw them into what we call our ‘Odd Lots’, or mixed suits.

1915 W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage ix. 33 Mr. Carey had so many books that he did not know them, and as he read little he forgot the odd lots he had bought at one time and another because they were cheap.

1931 C. Maughan Markets of London 105 Parcels of five bags or less are known as ‘odd lots’ and are sold separately at the end of the auctions.

1970–1 Public Opinion Q. 34 584 The problem was to get some kind of a known group representative of a psychotropic-using population and not the usual sample of institutionalized respondents or odd-lots of patients from scattered sources.

1999 E. Toth Unveiling Kate Chopin v. 80 His business..involved not only cotton, but also market prices on commodities such as sugar, whiskey, cigars, molasses, and corn, and odd lots of other things.

1870 J. K. Medbury Men & Mysteries Wall St. 41 Supple youths loom up above every level,..snapping up an odd lot of Pacific Mail here, and selling five thousand Michigan Southern there.

1929 Times 1 Nov. 22/5 The list generally moved up under heavy accumulation of standard issues, together with reports of a tremendous volume of odd-lot bargain buying.

1937 Life 1 Nov. 30/2 SEC reported the biggest volume of odd-lot buying (in blocks of less than 100 shares) on its records.

1976 National Observer (U.S.) 28 Feb. 8/4 But odd-lot figures..suggest that small investors were, on balance, selling in November and December of 1972 and in January of 1973.

1989 W. Boroson Keys to Investing in Mutual Funds ii. 16 It's cheaper to buy ‘round lots’—(100 shares or multiples of 100) rather than ‘odd lots’.

2001 N.Y. Times 18 Mar. iii. 8/1 Odd-lot investors, the small-fry who buy and sell fewer than 100 shares, have a reputation for doing the wrong thing.

1903 N.Y. Times 11 Nov. 12/4 The difficulties under which the odd-lotter labors in dealing in stocks as inactive as Pacific Mail.

1976 National Observer (U.S.) 28 Feb. 8/4 There is some statistical evidence that odd-lotters have been wrong far too often in the past.

2001 N.Y. Times 18 Mar. iii. 8/1 Odd-lotters who short the market—sell borrowed shares in hopes of profiting from a decline.