Instinet, the electronic trading and agency-only brokerage service provider, has entered into a reciprocal liquidity agreement between its Asia-Pacific broker-dealer units and J.P. Morgan. The move is expected to broaden Asian liquidity access opportunities available to each firms institutional clients.
Joel Hurewitz, Instinets head of Product Strategy, Asia, said the firm plans to connect to all meaningful pools of liquidity in the region.
Since 2010, weve been proactive in pursuing innovative new ways for our clients to efficiently trade the rapidly fragmenting Asia-Pacific equity markets, Hurewitz says. Deals such as this offer the buy side access to additional sources and types of liquidity, and ultimately provide the luxury of choice in how they implement their trading strategies.
Instinet clients may use the firms Nighthawk liquidity aggregation algorithm to access JPM-X in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia, while J.P. Morgan clients can access Instinet BLX Australia, CBXTM Hong Kong and CBXTM Japan.
Hurewitz said usage of non-displayed trading venues, or dark pools, continues to accelerate in Asia, and that demand is growing for dark liquidity aggregation tools.
Dark pool trading has been growing rapidly in the region; our Asia-Pacific pools alone each grew between 100% and almost 600% last year, he says. In that kind of environment, the firms that offer access to the widest range of liquidity destinations are going to be able to best reduce costs for fund managers and, ultimately, the end investors.
(CG)