The first month of the year saw a healthy increase in equity trading volume, both on the exchanges and on private trading venues.
That’s according to the monthly TABB Equities LiquidityMatrix, a report that charts month-over-month industry equity volume for the exchanges, Trade Reporting Facilities (TRFs), Alternative Trading Systems (ATSs) and Single-Dealer Platforms (SDPs).In January 2015 total market share increased 6% to 7.3b billion shares month-over-month. ATS/SDP volume increased 8% during the same time.
TABB reported ATS/SDP volume accounted for 34% of total off-exchange volume in January 2015.
Part of the reason for the increase in trading was the month-over-month rise in volatility. The VIX average close increased from 16.3 to 19.1, the highest monthly volatility since June 2012. During the same period, off-exchange volume decreased from 35.0% to 34.5%.
The entire report is available here:
Data that was taken into consideration during the survey also included:
The SEC announced the Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee members on 1/13/15. There are 17 members with 2-year terms. The STA filed a comment letter regarding the membership of the committee on 1/23/15. The STA recommended the SEC add a representative from a retail brokerage firm to the committee prior to its first meeting.
On 1/20/15 nine investment managers announced they plan to launch a new equity trading venue, called Luminex. Luminex will be focused on more efficiently sourcing block liquidity and will open for trading in 2015. The nine founding firms include BNY Mellon, BlackRock, Capital Group, Fidelity Investments, Invesco, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, MFS Investment Management, State Street Global Advisors and T. Rowe Price.
IEX revised the launch date for its top of book feed (TOPS) to 4/1/15. The feed will only include quotes (not trades) and the quotes will not be protected under RegNMS’ Order Protection Rule. Only orders that have a displayed indicator will be reflected in TOPS.
LavaFlow ECN ceased operations on 1/30/2015. The FINRA Alternative Display Facility (ADF) will still be operational; however, until a new ADF market participant is retained, FINRA will cease to send ADF quotation and trade data to the SIPs.
