Weekly Highlights

• Overall trading frictions remained contained last week as spreads and post trade quote stability were range bound within their post March period. As we have noted in these weekly updates, market volumes are off their peaks and individual trade sizes have been below their longer term average, suggesting any pick up in volatility could strain execution.

• Last week we saw this with NVDA. Earnings helped push Thursday volumes significantly higher along with early morning spreads and post trade quote instability. Average trade sizes did not pick up with volume but remained at the lows of their recent range. We estimate that benchmark slippage with popular algos such as VWAP and IS was at its highest since the mid-March bank related volatility.

• Against this backdrop, ASPEN Fee/Fee had its best day ever for overall matched shares in NVDA on Thursday, and best day ever for shares matched from orders displayed on our free market data feed, IQX. This was driven by the largest count of roundlot or larger orders in NVDA, which improved the NBBO on arrival on IQX for the year, demonstrating that our unique liquidity can help improve execution even during difficult times.

• If you're not already using our platform to optimize your trading performance, we encourage you to get in touch. Our displayed quotes are available through our market data feed, IQX, which you can access directly, or through Exegy, MayStreet, Redline, and ACTIV.