BREXIT MEANS BETTER TRADE
The EU’s ‘Dark Pool caps’ suspended such trades above a fixed level. The FCA stopped applying Volume Caps to UK equities in Dec 2020 and then to all equities traded in the UK in March 2021. This was formalised in the Financial Services Bill in July 2022.
Explanation:
Dark Pools are private venues run by banks, exchanges or independent operators where transactions are cheaper, anonymous and only disclosed after a trade, unlike on open markets. MiFID II limited dark-pool trades to just 4% of the total traded volume in an equity on any single trading venue over a rolling 12-month period and a maximum of 8% of total traded volume in an equity across all dark pool trading venues. If these traded volume limits are reached, then dark-pool trading in that equity is suspended.
These limits hurt the UK markets more than any other EU market as there are more large investment funds based in the UK that need to trade in large volumes. When the caps started in March 2018, some 800 equities breached the limits in the first quarter of trading including 85 of the FTSE100 companies, which hit the 8% cap. This was detrimental to the market as it restricted one of the most effective methods of trading large blocks of shares. The main effect of this ill-thought-through EU Regulation was to drive large-volume trading to other off-market trading methods such as systematic internalisers and periodic auctions.
The FCA stopped applying Volume Caps to UK equities in Dec 2020 and then to all equities traded in the UK in March 2021. This was formalised in the Financial Services Bill in July 2022.
The EU still has Double Volume Caps; at the moment in the EU dark pool trading has been suspended for 196 equities for all EU dark pool trading venues having hit the 8% limit, while 35 equities have been suspended on an individual trading venue having hit the 4% limit.
Reference: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/statements/update-double-volume-cap