Day of the Mifids: what happens on January 3?

Continued ambiguities in the rules could hit European market liquidity at the start of 2018

It is the morning of January 3, 2018. Traders file towards their desks, if they haven’t been there all night preparing, the trading screens flash into life – what happens next? Quite simply, the biggest regulatory change ever seen in European financial markets.

“I would expect more of a buy-and-hold and wait-and-see attitude amongst clients, because we don’t really know where all of this is going to end up on day one,” says a Stockholm-based investment bank fixed-income strategist.

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