Weekly Highlights

• An interesting thing happened on the way to a 2% decline in the SP500 and a 17% increase in the VIX last week: trading frictions didn't seem to budge. Spreads and post-trade quote stability remained in line with where they have been throughout this month and may have improved slightly among the more active large cap names. And while VWAP slippage may have had some strain earlier in the week, by the end of the week, based on our review, it was back in line with the rest of August for most names and even better for active large caps.

• As one would have expected, ETF market share increased with VIX, but in another sign that trade execution was not dramatically affected, large and smid cap daily volumes and trade sizes declined slightly, on balance.

• Further supporting our observations that trading costs remained largely stable last week, subscribers to IntelligentCross experienced some of the lowest average 500ms post-trade markouts of the month, especially driven by performance in matches happening against ASPEN Fee/Fee orders displayed on our free market-data feed, IQX.

• 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.