Agency broker Instinet has added another source to the depths of its Asian liquidity pool, broadening opportunities available to institutional investors in the region.
Joel Hurewitz, head of product strategy, Asia, Instinet, said the firm had signed a reciprocal agreement with J.P. Morgan and its Asia-Pacific broker-dealer units.
“Since 2010, we’ve been proactive in pursuing innovative new ways for our clients to efficiently trade the rapidly fragmenting Asia-Pacific equity markets,” Hurewitz said of Instinet’s effort to connect to all meaningful pools of liquidity in the region. “Deals such as this offer the buy-side access to additional sources and types of liquidity, and ultimately provide the luxury of choice in how they implement their trading strategies.”
Hurewitz said usage of non-displayed trading venues continues to accelerate in Asia, and that tools for dark liquidity aggregation are increasingly in demand.
J.P. Morgan joins Credit Suisse, ITG and Tora in Instinet’s reciprocal liquidity offering, which includes a total of 22 partners and 13 full service broker pools.
“Dark pool trading has been growing rapidly in the region; our Asia-Pacific pools alone each grew between 100% and almost 600% last year,” he said. “In that kind of environment, the firms that offer access to the widest range of liquidity destinations are going to be able to best reduce costs for fund managers and, ultimately, the end investors.”
Clients can now use Instinet’s Nighthawk liquidity aggregation algorithm to access J.P. Morgan's JPM-X dark pool in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia. J.P. Morgan clients can access Instinet BLX Australia, CBX Hong Kong and CBX Japan.