Buy-side European cash equity trading trends

In a series of articles, we’re exploring the development of single-stock options markets across the APAC region. Our aim is to highlight the many uses of the products as well as factors that may be acting as barriers to growth.

For the past several years, US stock investors have hedged their portfolios largely by looking at their calendars. Fed meetings, CPI prints, elections – whenever an event appeared on the horizon, investors would look to short-dated options to protect against the possibility of volatility.

While Brazil’s securities borrowing and lending framework has its strengths, it still trails global peers. In this paper, we propose steps to modernize the country’s SBL system, without compromising safety.

UK and EU regulators are set to reverse historic ‘unbundling’ rules. But while the rules were imperfect, we believe real strides were made in getting investors to pay attention to trading costs. Now more than ever, traders need to carefully choose the right execution partners and strategy.

More abundant and deeper liquidity in cleared swaps markets is achievable with incremental changes and targeted adjustments to rules governing swaps trading. This paper explores practical policy recommendations to achieve this goal.

Ahead of upcoming MiFID rules that ban PFOF, some firms are introducing new structures that directly link single market-maker venues with affiliated brokers. These structures offer even less competition for retail order flow than their predecessors.