Tradeweb Exchange-Traded Funds Update – February 2020
EUROPEAN-LISTED ETFs
Total traded volume
During February, total notional volume on the Tradeweb European-listed ETF marketplace reached a record EUR 43.5 billion, up EUR 7.2 billion from its previous best performance in August 2019. The proportion of transactions processed via Tradeweb’s Automated Intelligent Execution tool (AiEX) increased to 77%.
Adriano Pace, head of equities (Europe) at Tradeweb, said: “Amid heightened market volatility, particularly towards the end of the month, platform metrics remained strong. Our hit rate, which is the percentage of requests-for-quote resulting in completed trades, was well above 85%. The average trade size also increased by 43% in the last week of February, resulting in dealers’ average time to quote going up from 1.7 to 1.9 seconds.”
Volume breakdown
Both equities and fixed income ETFs saw net selling in February. In contrast, commodity-based ETFs were strongly bought, with ‘buys’ surpassing ‘sells’ by 28 percentage points. Overall activity in the asset class increased to 7% of the overall platform flow, beating the previous 12-month rolling average by two percentage points. More than EUR 21.5 billion was executed in the top three ETF categories by total notional volume.
Top ten by traded notional volume
The iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF proved to be February’s most heavily-traded European-listed ETF on Tradeweb. Ranked fifth, the Invesco Physical Gold ETC re-entered the top ten for the first time since December 2017.
U.S.-LISTED ETFs
Total traded volume
Total consolidated U.S. ETF notional value traded in February 2020 amounted to USD 11.2 billion.
Volume breakdown
As a percentage of total notional value, equities accounted for 53% and fixed income for 37%, with the remainder comprising commodity and specialty ETFs. The proportion of U.S. ETF trades executed on the platform via the Tradeweb AiEX tool was 50%.
Adam Gould, head of U.S. equities at Tradeweb, said: “Equity ETFs contributed to more than half of the total volume traded on our U.S. ETF platform in February. Overall trading activity remained strong despite the increased volatility in the last week of the month. This demonstrates the resilience of ETFs, and also of the RFQ trading mechanism in times of market stress.”
Top ten by traded notional volume
During the month, 731 unique tickers traded on Tradeweb’s U.S. ETF platform. The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF moved up two places from January to top February’s list of the most aggressively-traded U.S. ETFs.