Piotr Szawlis
How big is retail ETF trading in Europe, and where does it trade?
Retail investors have become a steady force in European ETFs. App-based brokers and savings plans have brought many more private investors to the market, and their orders mostly execute on venues built for them: retail segments of the main exchanges, Germany’s regional exchanges and dedicated retail venues. For ETF issuers, market makers and venues, the first questions are simple. How much of the market is retail, how fast is it growing, and where does it trade?
This is part 1 of a six-part Liquidity Matters series on retail ETF trading in Europe. It sizes the market: how much of ETF trading is retail, how fast it grows, on which days it matters most, and on which venues and in which countries it trades. The next five parts follow retail flow in more detail, from what retail buys and sells to how well its trades are executed. A preview of each is at the end of this article.
Key findings
- Retail grew 55.9%, the rest of the market 31%. Retail ETF value traded reached EUR 1.84bn a day in January to September 2026. That is 8.9% of ETF value traded, about one euro in eleven, up from 7.2% a year earlier.
- January and August were the high points. In January 2026 retail traded EUR 2.38bn a day, 10.5% of ETF value and more than twice January 2025. In August 2026 its share was 10.2%: retail held up while the rest of the market had its quietest month.
- On some days retail’s share is more than twice its average. Across 2026, retail took 8.9% of ETF value traded, but 19.7% on 25 May, a UK and US holiday, and 18.7% on 2 January. Mondays average 10.6%, the highest of any weekday.
- Retail outgrew the rest of the market in every quarter. Retail value traded rose 71% year on year in the first quarter of 2026 and 48% in both the second and third, against about 30% for the rest of the market.
- Two venues delivered most of the growth. LSE RSP and Tradegate each added about EUR 190m a day, together 61% of the EUR 623m a day increase. Vienna APA and Xetra Retail added most of the rest.
- Retail ETF investing is spreading beyond Germany. Germany still carries three quarters of retail value, down from 89%. The UK nearly tripled to 16%, and France, the Netherlands and Italy more than doubled together.
Retail grew faster than the rest of the market
Retail ETF value traded rose 55.9% in January to September 2026. It averaged about EUR 1.84bn a day. ETF trading away from retail grew 31% over the same months, so retail’s share of ETF value traded rose from 7.2% to 8.9%.
Retail ETF value traded and share of market
Average daily value, EUR millions · share of ETF value traded, %
Source: xyt. Retail venues, January 2025 to 9 October 2026. *October 2026 is month to date. Share is retail value divided by retail plus non-retail ETF value traded.
The months when retail mattered most
Retail’s share moves more than its volume suggests. January 2026 stands out: retail traded EUR 2.38bn a day, 125% more than in January 2025, and took 10.5% of ETF value traded, the highest share in the 22 months measured.
August is the other high point, and it is high for a different reason. In both years, non-retail ETF trading fell to its lowest month of the year in August, while retail trading held up. Retail’s share rose to 8.1% in August 2025 and 10.2% in August 2026, the second highest month overall. The lowest shares came in February and May 2025, at 6.7% and 6.8%.
For issuers and market makers, this means retail matters most at both ends of the calendar: in the busy months at the start of the year, and in quiet summer weeks, when retail is a larger part of what trades. Day by day, the same holds for Mondays and for US and UK holidays, exactly when institutional liquidity is thinner.
The days when retail mattered most
Daily figures for 2026 show how much the share moves from one day to the next. Across the 177 trading days with complete data from 2 January to 22 September 2026, retail took 8.9% of ETF value traded. On 45 of those days its share was above 10%, and on the busiest it was more than twice the average.
The highest shares came on days when much of the institutional market was away. On 25 May, a bank holiday in the UK and Memorial Day in the US, total ETF value traded in Europe fell to EUR 6.2bn and retail took 19.7% of it. On 2 January, the first trading day of the year, retail traded EUR 2.95bn, 18.7% of the total. Martin Luther King Day in the US on 19 January (15.3%), the UK’s early May bank holiday on 4 May (15.0%) and the UK’s summer bank holiday on 31 August (13.9%) are all in the top five.
Retail share of ETF value traded, day by day
Daily share of ETF value traded on retail venues · 2026 · %, dashed line is the average of 8.9%
Source: xyt. 2 January to 22 September 2026, 177 trading days. Total ETF value includes retail. Days without complete data (9 January, 1 April, 1 May, 1 June, 1 and 31 July, 6, 7 and 10 August) are left out. The ten highest days are marked, the five highest labelled.
Retail does not need a quiet market to stand out. On 2 February, retail traded EUR 4.11bn, its second-largest day of 2026, and still took 12.7% of a busy EUR 32.4bn day. Several of the top days fall at the start of the month, on dates when neobrokers execute savings plans, a pattern part 4 of this series looks at.
Mondays are retail’s strongest day of the week. Retail traded EUR 2.19bn on an average Monday in 2026, against EUR 1.7bn to EUR 1.8bn on the other weekdays, while total ETF trading on Mondays was slightly below the midweek level. Retail’s share on Mondays was 10.6%, against 8.2% to 9.0% on the other days, and eight of the ten highest-share days were Mondays. That fits orders that private investors place over the weekend reaching the market on Monday.
Mondays belong to retail
Retail share of ETF value traded by weekday · 2026 · %
Source: xyt. Retail venues, 2 January to 22 September 2026. Share is total retail value divided by total ETF value traded on each weekday.
The lowest shares came on the heaviest institutional days. On 30 June, the last trading day of the half year, total ETF value traded reached EUR 30.3bn while retail traded EUR 1.46bn, a share of 4.8%. The other low days fall in June and on 31 March, the end of the first quarter, at 5.9%.
The single largest retail day in the data came earlier, on 7 April 2025, in the sell-off that followed the US tariff announcements, when retail traded EUR 4.73bn of ETFs. In 2026, the largest retail days were 2 March, at EUR 4.12bn, and 2 February.
Retail outgrew the rest of the market in every quarter
Retail value traded was 71% higher in the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, and 48% higher in both the second and the third. Non-retail ETF trading grew 30% to 32% in each quarter, so retail’s share stayed above 8% throughout: 9.4% in the first quarter, 8.4% in the second and 8.8% in the third.
The venue mix changed along the way. Since mid-2026, Trade Republic internalises the orders it used to route to Lang & Schwarz, and much of that flow is now reported through Vienna APA, which grew from EUR 30m a day in the first quarter to EUR 191m in the third. Part 3 of this series looks at that shift in detail.
Retail value traded by quarter
Average daily value, EUR millions · retail venues
Source: xyt. Quarterly averages weighted by trading days. EIX, in xyt data only from January 2026, is left out of the 2026 bars.
LSE RSP and Tradegate delivered most of the growth
Retail liquidity is concentrated on a few venues. Tradegate alone carried 32% of retail value in January to September 2026, EUR 582m a day, against 35% a year earlier. LSE Retail Service Provider (RSP) trades rose 2.8 times to EUR 296m a day, and their share of retail value rose from 9% to 16%.
Retail ETF value traded by venue
Average daily value, EUR millions · January to September
Source: xyt. Euronext Best of Book covers Paris, Amsterdam, Milan and Brussels. Other regional venues are Frankfurt, Equiduct, Düsseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Hannover. Vienna APA is in xyt data from October 2025 and EIX from January 2026, so neither has a 2025 bar. Cboe retail-only segments, under EUR 1m a day, are left out.
Measured by what each venue added, the picture is just as concentrated. Leaving out EIX, retail value rose by EUR 623m a day. LSE RSP added EUR 191m and Tradegate EUR 189m, together 61% of the increase. Vienna APA added EUR 107m a day and Xetra Retail EUR 64m, trading 3.1 times as much as in March to September 2025, its first reported months. Euronext Best of Book more than doubled to EUR 46m a day.
Two large venues held their volume rather than grew it. Lang & Schwarz and Gettex traded about the same daily value as in 2025, so their shares of retail value fell, from 20% to 12% and from 17% to 10%.
Where the growth came from
Change in average daily value, January to September 2026 on 2025 · EUR millions
Source: xyt. Retail venues. EIX, in xyt data only from January 2026, is left out. Vienna APA is in xyt data from October 2025, so its full 2026 value counts as growth.
Retail ETF investing is spreading beyond Germany
By the venue’s home market, Germany still carries most retail ETF trading: EUR 1.39bn a day, 75% of retail value. Its daily value grew 40%, but its share fell from 89%, because other markets grew faster.
The UK leads that growth. Retail ETF value on UK venues nearly tripled to EUR 296m a day, almost all of it through LSE RSP, and the UK’s share of retail value rose from 9% to 16%. Trades reported through Vienna APA, counted here as Austria, added EUR 107m a day, 6% of retail value. France, the Netherlands and Italy are smaller but growing quickly: together they traded EUR 47m a day, more than twice their 2025 level. In Italy, retail value on Euronext Milan went from close to zero to almost EUR 9m a day.
Outside Germany, the UK leads
Retail ETF value traded by country of venue · average daily value, EUR millions
Source: xyt. Country is the home market of the venue or APA. Vienna APA counts as Austria, Cboe CXE as the UK and Cboe DXE as the Netherlands. Germany, at EUR 991m a day in 2025 and EUR 1,386m in 2026, is left out for scale.
How to read these numbers
All values are average daily value traded in euros; quarters are weighted by trading days. Comparisons set January to September 2026 against the same months of 2025. In the monthly chart, October 2026 is month to date, through 9 October. Daily figures cover 2 January to 22 September 2026; total ETF value is not available by day for 2025, so 2025 days are ranked by retail value only.
What it means for issuers, market makers and venues
Retail is now about one euro in eleven of European ETF trading, and in its strongest months more than one in ten. It is growing faster than the rest of the market, its share peaks both in busy starts to the year and in quiet summers, and most of the new volume lands on a handful of venues, increasingly outside Germany. For issuers, that is a map of where listings and market making arrangements need to sit. For market makers, it shows where and when retail demand is largest.
To see retail volumes, shares and venue breakdowns for your own ETFs, contact our sales team at sales@xyt.one.
Coming next in this series
Part 1 showed how big retail ETF trading has become and where it trades. The next five parts look at how it behaves:
- Part 2 · Buying and selling. Retail investors were net buyers of ETFs in every month of 2026, and kept buying crypto and commodity ETPs while the wider market sold them.
- Part 3 · The payment for order flow ban. Within weeks of 1 July 2026, one venue’s share of retail value fell from 14% to 3%. Where the flow went, and why venue-level figures alone can mislead.
- Part 4 · Savings plans. One broker’s savings plans now buy more than EUR 1bn of ETFs a month, on dates you can put in a calendar.
- Part 5 · Outside core hours. A fifth of value on regional and retail venues trades before 09:00 or after 17:30 CET, and the busiest half hour starts at the US open.
- Part 6 · Execution quality. How often retail trades land inside the primary market spread, venue by venue.
