Luminex Trading & Analytics saw a record month of activity on its buy-side owned block trading platform as asset managers continue to seek natural block liquidity.
The platform saw monthly shares traded peak at more than 187 million shares and notional value traded of just over $10 billion in May, its most successful month so far to date.
It was also among the top venues the alternative trading system (ATS) industry for average trade size in April, according to data that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) currently tracks.
“We’re thrilled to see the buy-side community increasing their use of Luminex’s unique model for clean, natural large-block liquidity at disruptively low rates,” said Luminex’s chief executive Jonathan Clark commented.
“We responded to our subscribers by including a new order type, and they are responding in turn with more order flow than ever, resulting in new record volumes, fill rates and average trade sizes on our platform.”
Luminex was launched in 2015 and is led by Clark who is considered an industry veteran and the former head of equity trading for the Americas at BlackRock. The platform was established to provide buy-side participants with a more efficient method trading blocks on an anonymous and non-quoted basis to help users source liquidity and minimise market impact.
In February, Luminex added conditional order types to the venue at the request of its members to allow users to interact with more block orders. It also offers negotiable and firm orders which help prevent a breakdown of negotiations if one party backs out despite entering intentions to trade.
Speaking to The TRADE earlier this year, Clark explained that regulatory changes like MiFID II in Europe, with its focus on transparency and best execution, have positioned the block trading platform strongly for the future.