European credit trades keep getting larger. The notional blended trade size for Investment grade and high yield European credit was €786k in September 2025 up from €689k in September 2024 and has been consistently trending higher despite the ongoing electronification of fixed income markets.
Data from MarketAxess’s TRaX show euro investment grade printing €489.6 billion for the third quarter of 2025, up 8.5% year-on-year, while trade counts slipped 5.4% to 683.7k—lifting average ticket size to €0.72 million, up 15% YoY.
Euro high yield posted €72.1 billion in Q3 2025, up 2.7% YoY on 88.1k trades, down 10.9% YoY, with an average clip of €0.82 million, up 15% year on year. 
Back to school September saw the seasonal pick up in volumes. IG’s volumes moved from €158.0 billion in July to €152.2 billion in August (-3.7% MoM) and €179.3 billion in September (+17.8% MoM). Trade counts bounce not quite as much with ticket size going up from €660k in July to €770k in September.
HY saw the biggest jump back in activity in September with volume jumping 36.1% month on month to €28.3 billion from €20.8 billion in August.
Be it due to heavier issuance patterns, or ongoing change linked to ETFs related volume, or prevalence of Portfolio trading, trade size has kept creeping higher. This seems relatively non vanilla, as electronification is usually thought to bring in automatization and workflow for lower size low touch tickets but this is not the pattern reflected in TRAX data.
Read more: Bigger / smaller: What sizes are optimal for electronic trading?
On weekly data, IG and HY activity move together strongly on activity, less so on trade size. In Q3 2025, the correlation between IG and HY volumes is 0.95 and between trade counts 0.91, while average trade size is lower at 0.73.
For the last 12 months volumes are correlated at 0.91 while trade count correlation is0.94. But on a 3-month view, average trade size is more market conditions dependent as HY to IG average trade size’s correlation is 0.78 only. While volume and activity levels tend to rise and fall together, trade sizes are therefore more idiosyncratic.
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