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EquiLend executed close to 2.6 million trades on its NGT platform during May against US$2.7 trillion in notional value. This represents 10 per cent growth in trade volume on April 2022 figures and a 22 per cent rise YoY.
According to Mike Norwood, EquiLend director and global trading product owner, volumes were driven primarily by equities, with non-GC activity hitting a new high at 25,000 trades per day. Non-GC volumes made up 21 per cent of trading activity over the period, compared with 79 per cent for GC.
Industrials proved to be the most active sector, displacing healthcare at the top of the activity chart for the first time since July 2020.
In EquiLend Clearing Services (ECS) loan market — which provides direct connectivity to central counterparties (CCPs) to enable central clearing for securities finance trades — demand remains high for high-rate GC transactions but supply is limited owing to the confluence of month-end dynamics and excess cash positions towards the end of May.
Activity remains strong in the hard-to-borrow segment, even though demand for meme stocks has subsided in line with continued correction of equity markets.
The ETF sector also continued to sustain strong borrower demand, particularly those tracking technology, fixed income and large cap indices, as well as sector-specific ETF products.
More recently, EquiLend announced a new daily trading record of 145, 380 trades against a notional value of US$157.5 billions for 15 June 2022.
Norwood indicates that this daily trading record was driven by strong activity across both equity and fixed income lending, representing the third-highest volume totals ever for each individual segment.
He notes that six of the top 10 daily trading volumes have been recorded in 2022. The US, the UK and Japan have each demonstrated rising volumes, with Carrefour being the top name traded on the NGT platform.
