Weekly Highlights

• VIX straight climbed over 30% last week to close at its highest level since April. Technology stocks led to the downside, and with them came an unwind in momentum and growth factors. But at the same time, many defensive factors such as low-vol, beta neutral, and market neutral were trounced by outperforming small caps. Given all these rotations, it's not surprising that ETFs picked up market share as a group. Yet smid-caps in general did not seem to get the same liquidity bump from outperformance in the Russell 2000.

• All in all, it was probably one of the more difficult weeks for execution that we have seen in a while. This was further evidenced by significant declines in post-trade quote stability across the board.

• Despite the market frictions, or perhaps because of them, subscribers made excellent use of the unique performant liquidity on IntelligentCross. July 17th was our best market share day of the year and second best ever as we matched over 180bps of total consolidated share volume, single counted, across Midpoint and ASPEN. This was equivalent to over 2% of the notional traded in the US.

• Driving our strength were three key elements. 1. Transparency: last week was our best week of the year for share quantities, displayed on our free market data feed IQX, of roundlot and larger orders priced better than the NBBO on arrival. 2. Immediacy: last week was our best week of the year for daily shares matched against IOC order types. 3. Performance: IntelligentCross continued to deliver superior post-trade stability and lower markouts measured to 500ms than the exchange averages.

• 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.