Instinet, a global agency-only broker, has announced that June 2010 marked the largest average daily value of orders placed and average daily value traded on its JapanCrossing dark pool since May 2008.
The rise in JapanCrossing volumes comes despite a decrease in overall equity value traded across Japan. According to figures from Thomson Reuters, the average traded value on all Japanese exchanges was $333.4 billion in June, compared to $370.3 billion in May 2010.
In June, JapanCrossing had an average daily value traded of $69.87 million, with an average daily value of orders placed of $580.79 million, according to Instinet's figures.
Glenn Lesko, CEO for Instinet in Asia, attributed the increase to the growing number of participants in the pool and the firm's role as an aggregator of liquidity between its global and Asian institutional client base.
“When we speak with global institutions trading Asian equities, the provision of liquidity is consistently cited as the most crucial service they require from brokers,” said Lesko. “With new alternative liquidity venues soon launching in Asia such as Chi-X Japan and Chi-East, along with the growing number of broker dark pools, the ability to not only provide your own liquidity but to intelligently aggregate and manage access to other venues is increasingly critical to institutions.”
Chi-X Japan is scheduled for a soft launch at the end of this month with a small group of participants and a limited number of liquid stocks. Trading will be extended to include the entire group of Nikkei 225 constituents and other selected stocks. Chi-X Japan will operate a continuous matching model and maker-taker pricing to try and attract liquidity providers.