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Let There Be Light: European Edition

Let There Be Light: European Edition

2025 Year-In-Review

  • Periodic auctions and systematic internalisers operated by electronic liquidity providers had their best ever years, while dark books retreated from their record high in 2024.
  • Large-in-scale executions fell as a proportion of total dark trades, yet their average daily value traded reached a record high because of growth in overall activity.
  • Dark venues that do lots of LIS trading, such as Cboe BIDS, Liquidnet and Virtu Posit, lost market share even though their average daily value traded increased.
  • Cboe Periodic Auction EU increased its ADVT by more than €1 bn in 2025, the biggest gain of any of the 51 alternative trading venues that we track.
  • Jane Street's JX-EU was the best performing ELP, adding 74 bps of market share across its two SIs. XTX SI gained 24 bps across both its entities.

December:

  • Dark order books dropped to their lowest share of on-venue trading since 2022 as the EU's new, tougher volume cap suppressed activity.
  • The proportion of dark trades using the large-in-scale waiver jumped to 39.29%, the highest level in five years.
  • Periodic auctions lost 34 bps of market share, but retained their comfortable lead over dark order books.
  • Systematic internalisers run by market makers all did less business in December than November.
  • Citadel Connect and Hudson River Trading SI gained market share by posting smaller declines in activity than their nearest rivals. Jane Street and XTX remained the two largest ELP SIs.

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