Weekly Highlights

• The first half-hour of the trading day is known to be difficult. Typically, spreads are at their widest, quote durations at their shortest, and the ratio of distinct NBBO quotes to total NBBO quotes is at its highest. This means that if you miss a price you like, it’s less likely you will see it again during the opening spin than the rest of the day.

• When navigating this tricky time of day, our platform may be valuable. During the first half-hour of trading last week, we saw over 1.4mm daily displayed orders of round-lot or larger that improved the NBBO on arrival by over 30% of the spread across more than 10,000 names on our free market data feed, IQX. And both our ASPEN Fee-Fee and Midpoint books offered industry-leading post-trade quote stability, even during this volatile period of the day.

• The combination of unique spread-saving liquidity and post-trade performance helped make last week our best week ever for match quantities of demi-block or larger (beginning at 2000 shares), despite the market-wide median trade size being about 4% smaller than the prior three weeks.

• If you’re not using our platform to fully unlock trading performance, get in touch. Contact the desk for more information on our weekly data or to connect to IQX. It’s available directly or through Exegy, MayStreet, Redline, and ACTIV.