Exchange Highlights: MEMX Starts The Year Off Strong

New MEMX volume records and ETP growth

Market Share

MEMX total market share was 4.2% and exchange share was 7.0% in January, up strongly year-over-year.

Volume & Diversity of Liquidity

MEMX hit new average daily volume records of 522 million shares and $24 billion notional value per day in January, including new daily highs of 775 million shares and $37.9 billion notional value on January 24th.

ETP volume has grown dramatically over the last two months, accounting for 24% of industry share volume in January 2022, doubling year-over-year from 12% of industry volume in January 2021. MEMX is the 4th largest exchange trading ETPs, with market share of 5.2% in January 2022, up from 0.74% in January 2021.

In January, the 20 most active ETPs accounted for 41% of ETP volume and 10% of all equity volume. MEMX market share in these symbols was 5.2%.

Market Structure

In August 2021, MEMX submitted a request for exemptive relief  requesting that the SEC permit “tick constrained” NMS stocks that trade with an average quoted spread of 1.1 cents or less to be quoted in a half penny increment ($0.005), along with a commensurate 50% reduction in the access fee cap ($0.0015) for any securities trading in that smaller increment. A recent set of reverse splits in five tick constrained ETPs further illustrates the potential benefits of tick reform, which include improved quote quality, lower trading costs, and greater venue competition. The new data  shows that after the reverse splits these securities experienced a 69% reduction in quoted spreads, on average, indicating that spreads could be meaningfully narrowed through tick size reform.