Equities trading firm Liquidnet has launched a volume weighted average price (VWAP) cross-trading capability in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia that allows pre-market block trading at the full day VWAP price and includes built-in price protection features to achieve little or no market impact.

The VWAP cross functionality builds on the company’s existing VWAP smart blocks functionality, which allows intra-day VWAP block trading. The new feature provides access to a unique source of block-size, pre-market institutional liquidity, the company says, hence offering its member community a significantly improved VWAP performance and minimized market impact.

The offering can be accessed either via the company’s front-end system or the trading desk, offering complete global coverage, regardless of Asia-Pacific trader workflow.

Tristan Baldwin, head of equities, Asia-Pacific, Liquidnet, says: “The VWAP cross capability is designed for traders to ensure they can utilize this market opening strategy in scale, and with the peace of mind to know that they can still benefit if there are large price movements across a trading day.”