Off-board trading scored another win of sorts compared to the public exchanges.
The total volume of shares that traded in dark pools in February dropped only 1 percent compared to the 2 percent slide in trading on the public venues, according to Tabb Group’s February Equity Liquidity Matrix data.
Overall, total U.S. equity trading volumes were down 3 percent in February from January, according to the report. U.S. equity volume was 4.192 billion shares in February, compared to 4.270 billion shares in January and 4.571 billion a year ago.
Tabb noted U.S. dark pools handled 2.386 billion shares in February, off slightly from the 2.481 billion in January and 0.5 percent up from the 2.373 billion shares handled in February 2012.
Among the dark pools, Credit Suisse’s Crossfinder remained the U.S. market share leader with 123 million shares traded per day or 14 percent of the total volume, according to Tabb’s Liquidity Matrix. This compares to 121 million shares in January.
Coming in second was Barclays LX, which recently acquired that slot in last month’s report. LX saw 92 million shares cross for the month versus 91 million in January. It captured 10 percent of total market volume.
Goldman Sachs’ Sigma X, which previously held the second slot in December and ceded it to Barclays in January, came in third for February with 87 million shares crossing each day and 10 percent of total market volume. This compares to 90 million shares in January.
Also of note, total off-exchange trading, over all, has dropped slightly to 36 percent in February from 37 percent in January.
Cheyenne Morgan, author of the report, added that the public exchanges saw the bigger drop-off in trading volumes – with the exception of three: the Nasdaq Stock Market, Direct Edge EDGA and NYSE MKT, which were up.
Nasdaq saw 1.04 billion shares trade up from 965 million shares, giving it a 25 percent matched market share in Tabb’s tally and showed a monthly volume gain of 8 percent from January. EDGA had 231 million shares trading daily, climbing from 182 million shares. That gave it a 6 percent matched market share and monthly volume gain of 27 percent. NYSE MKT reported 19 million shares trading with less than 1 percent market share, but a 20 percent gain month- over-month.
In contrast, NYSE saw its monthly volume come in at 725 million shares in February, down from 743 million shares in January or a drop of 2 percent.
