Fund managers are intensifying late-day dashes to trade shares in the US and Europe, raising concerns the heavy burst of activity leaves some of the world’s largest stock markets highly exposed during a malfunction. The proportion of daily EU equities trading that takes place in stock exchanges’ end-of-day auctions hit a record 29 per cent in the first quarter, according to analytics firm big xyt. That compared with 22.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, the data provider said.
On May 31 US index provider MSCI rebalanced its indices, leading to 68 per cent of European equities trading and 43 per cent of US equities trading taking place at the close on that day, according to big xyt. Trading executives are mostly concerned about the impact of an outage during the closing auction, like the one that hit European exchange group Euronext in October 2020.