Weekly Highlights

• With VIX remaining near its highs for the year last week, and declines in both SP500 and R2000, it’s no surprise that trading conditions generally worsened. Market wide, post-trade quote stability declined especially in large-caps with Financial and Energy names taking the worst of it. Smid-caps continue to see strains in average trade size and, as a group, were at their lows for the year in terms of contribution to overall trading in shares.

• On the other hand, aligned with a heightened VIX, ETF market share remained elevated. But post-trade quote stability suffered the most of any group we track, especially later in the day. Making liquidity seeking even more difficult, we show that the contribution of larger trades such as demi-block and higher were at their lows for the year, while odd lot quantities were near their highs.

• Nevertheless, IntelligentCross had its third week in a row setting year-to-date records for daily ETF match quantities of demi-block and larger. More importantly, it was also our best week of the year for the number of daily ETF orders of round lot and larger displayed on our free market data feed, IQX. With an average resting time of over 5 seconds, this unique liquidity helped our subscribers navigate the more difficult trading conditions of last week. Overall, the increase in ETF activity on our platform helped make last week our best of the year for daily share quantity of displayed round lot and larger orders priced better than the NBBO on arrival.

• If you haven't yet leveraged our platform to boost your trading outcomes, we encourage you to connect with us. Our displayed ASPEN quotes are available through our market data feed, IQX, which can be accessed directly or via providers such as Exegy, MayStreet, Redline, and ACTIV.