Weekly Highlights

• We hope everyone enjoyed the last long weekend of the summer. Welcome to September, and what should amount to a busy fall, with rates and elections at the center of attention.

• August ended much differently than it started. A month that began with plunging prices and a surging VIX, closed with prices near record highs and a roundtrip back to mid-July levels of volatility. Execution costs carved out a similar pattern with post-trade quote instability and spreads dramatically increasing in the beginning of the month, only to quickly return to levels more consistent with early summer. Notable changes affecting trading costs at the end of the month versus the beginning include decreased daily volumes and trade sizes, and a decline in smid-cap market share, while ADRs were on the ascent. Market leadership has changed as well. We spoke about real estate and utilities last week, but in general, low-vol, yield friendly, and defensive names are performing well.

• Subscribers were able to use IntelligentCross to help weather August’s changing currents. Last month was our best month ever for notional market share of the TCV at just under 195 bps, single counted. It was also our best month ever for total volumes traded at just under 4.1 billion shares matched, also single counted. Driving our growth has been the consistent availability of performant liquidity on the platform. What do we mean by performant liquidity? 1. Transparency: Last month was our best month of the year for roundlot and larger orders displayed on our free market data feed, IQX, priced better than the NBBO on arrival. 2. Size: last month was our second best ever for daily shares matched of demi-block and larger. 3. Urgency: over 56 million shares per day were executed through IOC order types including midpoint, and August was our best month ever for daily IOC orders. 4. Performance: IntelligentCross Midpoint and ASPEN continue to have industry leading post-trade performance measured by quote stability and absolute markout after the trade.

• 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, and ACTIV.