Liquidnet reports a surge in electronic trading activity amid a record-breaking week for Europe’s primary market

Liquidnet, a leading technology-driven agency execution specialist, has reported a record-breaking week for electronic new issues trading for the week commencing 8th January. Records were broken in terms of volumes, trading participation and average trade size. Details below:

• 617% YoY Growth: Volumes increased over six times on the same period last year.
• 190% higher trade volume in the second week of 2024 compared to next best week: This week’s volume was significantly higher than the previous record-breaking week, recorded on the week commencing 6th November 2023.
• Record active weekly users: New issues trading participation was the highest ever recorded – the second highest was recorded on 6th November 2023.
• Record average trade size: The week commencing 8th January saw the largest volume of new issues executed through Liquidnet and the largest average ticket size.

David Everson, Head of Trading, Fixed Income EMEA for Liquidnet, said: “As the first full week of the year comes to a close and Europe’s primary market reports record breaking issuance, the Liquidnet orderbook has seen a surge of activity, smashing through all previous records. This week has been extremely busy for us, we were expecting a lively start to the year but the level of demand particularly in some of the Government issues has been incredible. With Italy, Spain and Belgium (amongst others) receiving unprecedented over-subscription levels, its clear investors are keen to lock-in higher yields while they still can and with the strong tone at the start of the week issuers had the perfect opportunity. “This week our orderbook broke all previous records, traded volumes were up 617% vs the same week last year (a previously record breaking week for issuance) and 190% vs our busiest week recorded in November. We saw record numbers of users on the platform and continue to see more institutional adoption from both buy and sell-side, helping to drive the average trade size to a record high. As Europe’s only fully electronic CLOB dedicated to new issues, anyone without access will be missing out. Please reach out to a member of the team if you'd like more details.”