Weekly Highlights

• We’d like to welcome everyone back from the holiday week. We hope you had a great July 4th and are rested-up to kick off the third quarter.

• Last week’s execution environment was relatively calm with lighter volumes, higher post-trade quote stability, and slightly narrower spreads market-wide. However, ADRs trading around the European close were an exception due to international news.

• While VIX has been subdued for most of Q2 and ETFs have maintained a stable market share of volumes, one trend is notable: the percentage of ETF trades that are 1 share has been growing steadily this year, rivaling large-cap names at roughly 19% at its peak last week. Similar to large-cap names, there's a recurring intraday pattern with a flood of these trades early in the day, just after the open. This may challenge some execution algorithms as average trade sizes become distorted and accessible liquidity darkens. However, subscribers to IntelligentCross continue to see the benefits of our discrete matching platform and the unique liquidity we provide as the only ATS with an optional display order type visible on our free market data feed, IQX.

• Q2-2024 was the platform’s best quarter ever for daily match quantity of demi-block and larger trades for ETFs, providing valuable institutional execution amid the rise of small trades. It was also our best quarter for the daily number of ordered names and displayed order quantities of round-lot and larger. In fact, our displayed orders in ETFs were at or better than the NBBO over 60% of the day during Q2.

• 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.