Bonds quarterly liquidity assessment

ESMA has published the latest quarterly liquidity assessment for bonds available for trading on EU trading venues. For this period, there are currently 1148 liquid bonds subject to MiFID II transparency requirements. 

ESMA’s liquidity assessment for bonds is based on a quarterly assessment of quantitative liquidity criteria, which includes the daily average trading activity (trades and notional amount) and the percentage of days traded per quarter. ESMA updates the bond market liquidity assessments quarterly. However, additional data and corrections submitted to ESMA may result in further updates within each quarter, published in ESMA’s Financial Instruments Transparency System (FITRS), which shall be applicable the day following publication.   

The full list of assessed bonds is now available through FITRS in the XML files with publication date from 31 October 2023 (see here) and through the Register web interface.  

ESMA also publishes two completeness indicators related to bond liquidity data. 

The transparency requirements for bonds deemed liquid today will apply from 20 November 2023 to 18 February 2024. The application dates reflect the entry into force of the RTS 2 amendments (see the news item for more details). 

Data for the systematic internaliser quarterly calculations

The data covers the total number of trades and total volume over the period 1 April 2023 to 30 September 2023 and includes:

• 23,877 equity and equity-like instruments;
• 127,129 bonds; and
• 6,045 sub-classes of derivatives (including equity derivatives, interest rate derivatives, commodity derivatives, emission allowance).

Investment firms are required to perform the SI test by 15 November 2023.

The data is now available through FITRS in the XML files with publication date 31 October 2023.

The results for equity and equity-like instruments are published only for instruments for which trading venues submitted data for at least 95% of all trading days over the 6-month observation period. The data publications also incorporate OTC trading to the extent it has been reported to ESMA. The publication includes data for instruments traded or available for trading during the reference period considered.