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The UK Financial Conduct Authority has continued its relentless pressure on asset managers to come clean about the hidden fees and charges in dealing commissions.

The following data is derived from trading activity on the Tradeweb European-listed ETF platform.

Just twelve months ago, as we turned the corner from 2013 to 2014, it looked like some of the derivatives reform upheaval was starting to subside – at least in the U.S. Final SEF rules had been passed; swaps were being made-available-to-trade; we survived the government shut-down.

I had my doubts about SEFCON 5. I had even told one of the sponsors weeks in advance, tongue in cheek, “SEF’s are live and ticking, what’s there to talk about?” I knew better, and I indeed learned a few things.

The following data is derived from trading activity on the Tradeweb Markets institutional European- and U.S.-listed ETF platforms.

Traders want the best price — but they also want their trades to execute. The necessity of each came into focus in 2020, with credit markets episodically turbulent and traders working from home amid COVID-19. Given the extraordinary uncertainty and volatility, the need to trade larger and more specific risk profiles has gone up, particularly for clients who are benchmarked and face significantly higher risk of tracking error. In this environment, corporate bond traders who need to add or reduce risk are more inclined to concede a basis point or two off a trade, if it increases their certainty that either the risk can be transferred, or a more precise risk profile can be moved.

The following data is derived from trading activity on the Tradeweb Markets institutional European- and U.S.-listed ETF platforms.

The following data is derived from trading activity on the Tradeweb Markets institutional European- and U.S.-listed ETF platforms.

While electronic trading has been growing steadily since the late 1990s, for many products it has remained a stubbornly small percentage of overall trading volume. In recent years that has begun to change, however, with more trades taking place electronically and more workflow around those trades becoming digitized. As we entered into 2020, which for most probably feels like a distant memory, it was clear that there was a secular trend underway towards more electronic markets and that trend was broadly accelerating.

In this highly-charged political environment, there is one outcome everyone in the financial markets can agree they’d like to see on November 3, 2020 – a clear result in the U.S. presidential election. What are the odds of that actually happening and what variables are currently at play in the polling data that could influence the markets after the election?