September Volumes Set New Record

Trading activity picked up in September, following typical summer seasonal declines. As government bond yields across the global rose, average daily volume (ADV) for Tradeweb Markets of $592 billion (bn) – across rates, credit, money markets and equities – set a new record on the platform in September 2018, and increased 27.5 percent (%) year over year (YoY). Volumes have exceeded $100 trillion so far this year, and have surpassed total volumes for the entirety of 2017.

Derivative activity continued to grow across businesses. Rates derivatives volumes rose 39.8% YoY driven by continued growth in SEF volumes as well as strong activity on the MTF. Tradeweb Markets’ share of SEF volumes rose to 27.0% last month – an increase of five percentage points from August. In credit derivatives, the recent release of a technological upgrade that streamlines CDS trading by enabling clients to execute multiple, same direction orders as a single aggregate ticket helped drive year-over-year volume growth of 17.4%. Furthermore, single name CDS trading reached another record in September with $3.0bn traded in the month.

Fixed income trading remained robust throughout the month with both U.S. Treasuries and European Government Bonds volumes up over 20% YoY. U.S. corporate bond trading continues to see strong growth with U.S. High-grade volumes up 96.4% YoY and U.S. High-yield up 61.4%. U.S. High-grade averaged over $2bn a day for the first time in September and fully electronic volumes represented 3.8% of TRACE High-grade volumes – a new record. European corporate bond ADV of $1.3bn was 16.3% higher than September 2017. Repo trading rose to an ADV of $164.5bn, up 10.9% month over month (MoM) and 43.2% YoY; it reached a new post-global financial crisis record. Municipal bond volumes continue to rise with activity up 7.4% MoM and 11.7% YoY.

In equity markets, ETF volumes continue to remain strong, with U.S. ETF activity rising 29.5% YoY, while European ETF volume was 45.9% higher. Automated trading has seen strong adoption by institutional ETF clients as 40% of total tickets processed in September were executed via the AiEX tool. Equity derivatives trading continues to see significant growth year over year, with volumes up over 200% versus last September.

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