Tag Archives: ETF trading

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Bats Europe Enables Direct Access for Buy-Side Managers

According to MarketsMuse market structure mavens, if you can say “dis-intermediate” five times in under 5 seconds, or if you can simply spell the word (without looking at this blog post), then “you’ll get the joke” i.e. exchange operator Bats Global Markets (acquired last year by CBOE for $3.2bil) is a disrupt-or. After sell-side firms were given direct access to a new block trading service for the European equity market launched by stock exchange operator Bats Europe in December,  it was just revealed that starting next month, buy-side asset managers will gain direct access to the same block trading platform. The pending roll-out will enable buy-side traders to submit their own Indications of Interest (IOIs) so as to reduce information slippage.

Bats Europe licensed technology from Bids Trading, the largest block trading ATS by volume in the US to launch Bats LIS (Large in Scale) in December. Per reporting from Markets Media….

Dave Howson, chief operating officer at Bats Europe, told Markets Media that average trade size has grown to more than €1m over the past month since sell-side firms were given direct access to Bats LIS. He added: “We have eight to ten brokers regularly utilizing the platform with additional participants joining all the time.”

Buy-side firms have been able to access Bats LIS through a broker but the service is being rolled out so asset managers also have direct access.

Dave Howson, Bats

“Over the next month, buy side will have direct access to submit indications of interest into the Bats LIS platform,” said Howson. “One of the key benefits of the platform is that the buy side control their IOI up until it is matched before turning it over to a designated broker for execution, which means information leakage in minimized.”

Under MiFID II, the new European Union regulations which come into effect in January next year, block trades above a specified minimum size can trade under a large in scale waiver which allows market participants to negotiate trades without the need to make quotes public to meet the pre-trade transparency requirements. The ability to trade large blocks will become even more important as MiFID II also places volume caps on trading in a dark pool without a waiver.

Another MiFID II compliant service for block trading that has been introduced by Bats Europe is the Periodic Auctions book. Launched in October 2015, the Periodic Auctions book is a separate lit book that independently operates intra-day auctions throughout the day. Howson said: “A priority is to change the structure of our Periodic Auction order book to optimise the duration of the auction, which should result in increased order matching.”

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He continued that another priority in Europe is to increase the volume of trading of exchange-traded funds, which should be boosted by the MiFID II requirements to report ETF trading. Howson added: “The new trade reporting obligation under MiFID II will increase transparency in ETFs so should we expect to see an increase trading of these products on trading venues.”

In June last year Bats launched a new indices business with the introduction of a UK-focused benchmark index series of 18 different indices. In December, Bats added eight indices for the French, German, Italian and Swiss markets bringing the total number of European indices managed by Bats to 26.

“We are currently focused on building European coverage with our indices,” added Howson. “Further down the road we’ll look to create products on the back of the indices, but right now we’re focused on expanding our reach.”

Bats Europe operates a trade reporting facility, BXTR, which will be registered under MiFID II.  BXTR reported more than €4.8trillion in transactions last year.

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Is KCG Cracking Up? More Key Executives Quit ETF Trading Behemoth

As reported by various news outlets on Friday, KCG, the firm that was created last year via a “take-under” of former Knight Capital by HFT market-maker Getco Securities after Knight suffered a $460 million trading loss attributed to a technology snafu,  and whose business model somehow continues to pass the smell test by combining proprietary trading with “agency-only” execution of institutional orders that are directed to the firm courtesy of payment-for-order flow schemes, is suffering from more executive departures.

In a news release issued by the company, which was once considered to be a leading market-maker in ETFs, it was announced that Steven Bisgay, the firm’s CFO Richard Herr had left the firm. Two other senior executives have also apparently left during recent days, including Richard Herr, the firm’s head of corporate strategy and Andy Greenstein, the firm’s deputy general counsel. All three of these senior executives had come from Knight Capital when the 2 firms were combined in a $1.6 billion transaction.

According to one industry source, who is not authorized to speak on behalf of his firm stated, “The combination of the two cultures, one that is essentially an opportunistic trading shop and the other, which has been trying to justify its role as both a fiduciary broker and a prop trader is no doubt creating internal dysfunction.”

Light On Knight: Editorial Opinion

Editorial Opinion

In an era in which “CYA” is perhaps the most-used acronym by institutional fund managers focused on fiduciary responsibilities, its almost surprising to notice the many anecdotal remarks that point to a single-point-of reliance on Knight Capital’s role within the ETF marketplace.  Some would think it “shocking” that so many institutions were caught without having a chair when Knight stopped the music and instructed their customers to trade elsewhere.

Yes, based on volume/market share, Knight had become the single-largest “market-maker” for ETFs, as well as a broad universe of exchange-listed equities. Arguably, their pole position is courtesy of pay-to-play pacts with large equity stake holders and ‘strategic partners’ who control significant retail and institutional order flow; including household names such as TD Ameritrade, E-Trade and Blackrock.

This is not to suggest that Knight Capital has not earned its designation for being a formidable market-maker within the securities industry. Their most senior executives are deservedly well-regarded by peers, competitors and clients alike, and their trading capabilities are revered by many.

And yes, Knight’s most recent travails are, to a great extent the result of a  “bizarre software glitch” that corrupted the integrity of their order execution platform. There’s a reason why software is called soft-ware.

That said, this latest Wall Street fiasco–which resulted in a temporary disruption of NYSE trading and the permanent re-structuring of one of the biggest players on Wall Street who was rescued from the brink of total failure– is less about that firm being “too big to fail”,  or the many spirited debates regarding “algorithms that have run amok”, or even the loudly-voiced and often under-informed shouts coming from politicians in Washington regarding the ‘pock-marked’ regulatory framework by which US securities markets operate.

This story is about something much more basic: dependence by seemingly savvy fiduciaries  on a single, market-making firm that figuratively and literally trade against customers in order to administer the daily execution of literally hundreds of millions of dollars worth of retail and institutional customer orders. This happens, all despite the same fiduciaries  commonly inserting the phrase “best execution” within their very own mandates, internal policy documents and regulatory filings.

Many of these fiduciaries may not truly appreciate where Knight resides in the trading market ecosystem, the actual meaning of  “best execution”, or how they can achieve true best execution without being reliant on a single firm whose first priority is not to the client, but to themselves and their shareholders, who depend on the firm’s  ability to extract trading profits when ‘facilitating’ customer orders as being the ultimate metric for the value of their employee bonus and/or their ownership of shares in that enterprise.

CNBC, Barrons, and IndexUniverse (among others) have been following this story closely, and we point to excerpts from a reader comment posted in response to IU’s Aug 6 column  “4 ETF Lessons From Knight”  by Dave Nadig: Continue reading