Monthly Securities Finance Market Review: February 2025
This month, Mike Norwood, Equilend’s Head of Trading Solutions narrates the volatile picture we’ve seen in NGT data from February. Policy decisions from the new U.S. administration have made waves for markets, driving increased securities finance activity – what was the impact for market participants?
Read on for NGT backed data on the highs and lows of global securities lending markets.
The following data has been measured and derived from Equilend NGT.
Trading by Sector for February: The Global Picture
February picked up where January left off in terms of strong securities lending volumes. Equilend’s NGT platform saw 2,810,378 trades executed v. $3.07 trillion, down 4% over January on fewer business days (+6% on a daily average basis).
Equities and fixed income both saw 6% increases in daily average trading volumes as volatility picked up in the back half of the month and reached levels last seen in December. Policy decisions in the U.S. were the primary drivers for this volatility as concerns over economic growth and the impact of new tariffs shocked investors and drove indices down.
Market Volatility Impact
Tech names in particular came under pressure from the recent U.S. policy decisions, driving Information Technology to rank as the second most active sector in both the U.S. and Asia Pacific. In APAC, markets were generally higher with Japan as an outlier as the TOPIX (Tokyo Price Index) was down, and the Yen appreciated against the dollar. Expectations for economic growth and corporate performance coupled with inflation led to a 17% drop in Japanese SBL activity. Market volatility drove a slight increase of 2% month-over-month in French equities and an increase in shorts in both Financials and Consumer Discretionary sectors.
Conditions will continue to be volatile until there is more certainty around U.S. economic and geopolitical policy under the new administration. This should lead to strong demand and elevated trade volumes in the near term for market participants which we’ll continue to report on when we’re back for a Q1 round-up in early April.
Within global equities, NGT’s most in-demand sectors were:
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