John At The Center

As major Wall Street firms grapple with the effects of the stock market’s volatility, alternative trading system Liquidnet Holdings Inc. has filed to go public.

Liquidnet, which lets institutional investors buy and sell large blocks of stock anonymously, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month to raise as much as $500 million through an initial public offering of shares.

The company has set neither its share price nor size, so the actual amount it raises through an IPO will likely be different than the registration amount. The company, which declined to comment, …