Two-fifths of buy-siders don’t bother to specify which dark pools they want to access, according to new research from TradeTech Pulse, an independent research services group from TradeTech.
In a survey of 70 heads of trading at asset managers, 41% said they did not specify dark venues either through their own order routing capabilities or their broker.
“Only 35% of asset managers interviewed actually specified which pools they wanted access to when dealing via a broker and only 29% specified which pools they did not want access to,” the research read.
Asset managers were also asked if they thought they had enough information about the different types of dark pools in which they are trading.
The research found buy-siders felt most comfortable with information levels from agency dark pools such as Liquidnet and ITG and the least comfortable about exchange-owned dark pools.
“We’d like to do a beauty parade of dark pools by really closely analysing the venues but although we are close now to having enough data it is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions,” said Paul Squires, head of trading at AXA Investment Managers, who was interviewed for the research.