Monthly activity in fixed income ETFs surpassed 40% of the overall traded volume on Tradeweb’s European ETF Marketplace, with ‘buys’ in the asset class outperforming ‘sells’ by nine percentage points. The strong figures mark only the third time (after March and September 2016) that proportional volume has exceeded 40% of the platform’s total.
Adriano Pace, Managing Director for Equity Derivatives at Tradeweb.
Investors traded net long on all fixed income categories during the month except convertible and inflation-linked bonds.
Approximately €1.8 billion in notional was executed in government bond ETFs, the most heavily-traded category in February, closely followed by European equity instruments with around €1.75bn in traded notional.
Source: Tradeweb.
Total traded volume on Tradeweb’s European ETF marketplace reached €12.1bn during February, while the average daily traded volume exceeded €600 million.
Adriano Pace, Managing Director for Equity Derivatives at Tradeweb, commented: “Platform metrics remained very healthy despite the shorter month, as the number of active clients and individual trades both increased by 7%.”
Pace added: “Trade automation also gained momentum last month. We saw 8% of transactions in European-listed ETFs executed via OMSX, a rules-based trading tool that enables clients to set parameters dictating how orders are directed and executed without requiring access to the Tradeweb Viewer. Thanks to OMSX, buy-side execution desks are allowed more time to concentrate on more complex, value-added business.”
Top ten ETFs by traded volume
Fixed income exposures proved popular with investors during February with the asset class occupying seven positions in Tradeweb’s top ten most most actively-traded ETFs in Europe. The PIMCO Euro Short Maturity Source UCITS ETF was ranked first, after occupying the seventh spot in January’s top ten list. The fund is actively managed by PIMCO and invests primarily in short-term investment grade debt, denominated in euros. The average portfolio duration of the fund does not normally exceed one year.
The top ten most traded ETFs on Tradeweb’s European ETF Marketplace during February are listed below:
Source: Tradeweb.