ESMA publishes data for the quarterly liquidity assessment of bonds
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, has published its new quarterly liquidity assessment of bonds. Due to a technical error, the data was published earlier than the usual publication date (1 February 2023). This does not have any impact on the application date. The transparency requirements for bonds deemed liquid will apply from 16 February 2023 to 15 May 2023.
For this period, there are currently 1,010 liquid bonds subject to MiFID II transparency requirements.
The full list of assessed bonds are available through the Financial Instruments Transparency System (FITRS) in the XML files with calculation date from 20 January 2023 (see here) and through the Register web interface (see here).
ESMA is also publishing two completeness indicators related to bond liquidity data.
ESMA’s liquidity assessment for bonds is based on a quarterly assessment of quantitative liquidity criteria, which includes the daily average trading activity (trades and notional amount) and the percentage of days traded per quarter. ESMA updates the bond market liquidity assessments quarterly. However, additional data and corrections submitted to ESMA may result in further updates within each quarter, published in the FITRS, which shall be applicable the day following publication.