Amid another challenging year, J.P. Morgan takes the top spot in this year’s trading and execution survey.
U.S. equity volumes have remained choppy in 2023—but the market’s top trading and execution teams were there to negotiate the ebbs and flows for their clients.
“We continued to see a convergence back towards pre-pandemic levels of activity following the elevated volatility seen in 2020 and 2021,” according to Christopher Berthe, co-head of cash equity trading at J.P. Morgan, adding that U.S. equity volumes this year are down 15% in cash notional terms.
“However, that is not a uniform statement throughout the year, where year over year volume has been particularly tough in the first quarter with market volumes down 27% year over year,” Berthe said. “We have seen a gradual improvement throughout the year and Q3 volumes were slightly up versus the prior year. Still, overall lower volumes versus the prior year have been a challenge, both for us and for our clients, after having experienced two consecutive years of very elevated liquidity.”
For the 2023 All-America Trading & Execution Team, Institutional Investor polled buy-side traders and other investment professionals at asset management firms with investments in US equities asking them to rate brokers in 4 categories for trading and execution. These results reflect the responses from more than 230 individuals at over 220 firms.
The attribute scores were aggregated and weighted by the responding firm’s US commission range to create the overall US Trading & Execution Leaders table. Additionally, voters were asked to rate brokers across seven industry categories.