Chi-X Europe saw more liquidity than any other European venue in August. With a total turnover of €213.8 billion last month according to figures from trade body the Federation of European Securities Exchanges, it was the first time the multilateral trading facility (MTF) had reached top billing.
Chi-X tipped the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) by €8.6 billion to knock it off the top of the leaderboard.
Making more than 43 million trades to the LSEG’s 26.2 million, the MTF’s first-place ranking comes in a month where the venue broke several all-time market share records for individual days. These included trading 33.1% of the FTSE 100 in London and 30.22% of the AEX 25 in Amsterdam.
The MTF also broke its record for value traded in a single day on 5 August, moving €17.6 billion worth of equities.
Alasdair Haynes, CEO of Chi-X Europe, said with very high market volatility throughout the summer, trading participants were looking to take advantage of the deep liquidity as well as all potential savings opportunities available on MTFs and Chi-X in particular.
“Historically, volatile times have seen the incumbents’ market shares increase,” said Haynes. “However, a different pattern seems to have emerged during the last summer and trading participants and have increasingly traded on Chi-X Europe.”
Haynes believed people traded on Chi-X Europe because of efficiency, liquidity and price.
“The key is having the liquidity. Chi-X proved itself as a place that had significant liquidity, so smart order routing systems had most likely been programmed to do business here,” he said. “We’re cheaper than the incumbent exchanges. If, as a venue, you are reliable, then price will be one of the deciding factors.”
Chi-X has recently seen a significant shift in market share where historically people went back to national exchanges in uncertain times.
“This time, a massive vote in confidence has been delivered to Chi-X Europe,” said Haynes. “In times of turbulence, participants are ever more concerned about saving even fractions of basis points where possible, and therefore, are increasingly turning to us for those savings, as they did in August.”