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In the week ending the 6th of March 2026, volume trends in Leverage Shares’ products across 3 exchanges across Europe – the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the Borsa Italiana (BITA) and Germany’s XETRA – is a study of both contrasts and commonalities. The LSE in the United Kingdom is by far the deepest and most liquid of the three exchanges with average daily volumes (ADVs) across the entire year being twelve times that in XETRA and five times that in BITA. In March Month Till Date (MTD), LSE has the best breadth of all three exchanges with over 56% of products above the combined ADVs for January and February.
Total ADVs in Italy are 2.3 times that in Germany. Core crypto-proxy products like 3x Long Coinbase and MicroStrategy continue to aggressively scale their month-over-month baselines and account for over 80% of total volume. Simultaneously, momentous rotational surges are seen into traditional commodities – with Brent Oil and Natural Gas ETCs accelerating thousands of percent over their January and February baselines.
In Germany, product breadth is lowest with around 47% of products trading above combined ADVs for January and February. Macro hedging instruments and inverse positions dominate new volume while crypto-proxy longs are beginning to decelerate from the peaks in February.
Momentum and RegimesIn the United Kingdom, exchange liquidity profile is entirely dominated by a seemingly apocalyptic surge in the -3x Short South Korea (KORS). Prior to the most recent full week, KORS’ YTD volume was essentially negligible. While this massive allocation forced a relative rotation out of momentum tech, absolute numbers in crypto-proxies remain historically elevated. Given the massive breadth in sophisticated investors present in LSE, investors are heavily padding their downside risk with massive absolute volumes in the -5X Short Nasdaq 100 (QQ3S) while a niche short product such as the -3X Short Gold Miners (GDMS) has seen a 13X growth in volume in a single week in March relative to average volumes across both January and February.
Websim is the retail division of Intermonte, the primary intermediary of the Italian stock exchange for institutional investors. Leverage Shares often features in its speculative analysis based on macros/fundamentals. However, the information is published in Italian. To provide better information for our non-Italian investors, we bring to you a quick translation of the analysis they present to Italian retail investors. To ensure rapid delivery, text in the charts will not be translated. The views expressed here are of Websim. Leverage Shares in no way endorses these views. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, please seek financial advice. View the original at
Source: Leverage Shares analysis
Meanwhile in Italy, volumes are growing persistently across asset classes. Crypto-proxies have cemented structural volume levels while commodities are igniting localized surges from near-zero levels across January and February. After a lull in February, growing volume resilience in the -5X Short Nasdaq 100 (SQQQ) highlights a tactical, rotational hedge being applied against the heavily populated “long” crypto-proxy books of Italian investors.
Source: Leverage Shares analysis
Germany’s XETRA, meanwhile, sees liquidity being abandoned in “risk-on” crypto-proxies and piling into shorts on U.S. indices and Treasury yields. Early trends seen in positioning against South Korea in LSE moved into XETRA-centric investors’ portfolios. While this move wasn’t in quite as massive volumes, it was a sustained trend with momentum built up over the last week of February.
Source: Leverage Shares analysis
Acceleration and Potential TrendsA key factor to take into consideration is that the breadth of product availability varies across exchanges: LSE has the largest breadth of Leverage Shares products, XETRA has a little over half as much while BITA has half of XETRA’s. Despite that, Italy’s BITA-centric investors are currently trending towards show an extraordinary growth in awareness and interest relative to previous weeks’ crypto-proxy dominance of attention.
For European investors, the “elephant in the room” is KORS, which tracks the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) in which a staggering 43% of the ETF is held in two companies’ domestic stocks: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Both companies had been the beneficiary of an outsized valuation acceleration largely on account of narratives surrounding their strong footprint in HBM4 storage keenly sought by the likes of Nvidia’s Rubin platform, among others. Outside of a massive correction being implied in current trends – especially since supplies and pricing are likely already settled well in advance, shortage or not – the KOSPI hitting its circuit breaker at -7.72% on Monday (the 9th of March 2026) alone could prove to be another accelerant in interest for KORS this week.
LSE’s participation dynamics – as implied by volumes – reveal a relatively higher representation of a sophisticated, rapid-turnover client base (such as hedge funds, proprietary trading desks, and highly active retail investors) who are making some interesting positioning, as evidenced by acceleration trends – a 2nd order effect – seen in early positioning backed by strength in trades in the first week of March. Added to the risk-driven positioning is another Asian economy – Taiwan – as well as a staple of the oil industry in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Exxon.
Source: Leverage Shares analysis
Exxon’s deep partnerships with the GCC’s state-owned energy enterprises have amped up its risk profile in operations in the region in the foreseeable, resulting in a massive 4-digit percentage increase in the short product’s ADV along with a massive rise in Z-Score. Meanwhile, investor interest in Brent is spilling over from the futures market into LSE’s ETP segment, resulting in 1BRN’s solid rise so far. Interest in KORS remained strong through the past week while Taiwan’s precarious energy supply scenario and the potential impact on the semiconductor manufacturing sector’s profit margins – wherein stocks were already reeling from overbought scenarios throughout the current earnings season – have seen TAIS and SMHS entering strong upticks in interest in March.
XETRA trends indicate that German investors are mirroring – and catching up – with positioning seen in LSE volumes.
Source: Leverage Shares analysis
SKOR, the German counterpart to LSE’s KORS, sees a triple-digit percentage rise in ADV in March to achieve the top position within the rankings. Coming in at a close second is TLT5, which seems to indicate that German investors are taking the long view on Treasury yields remaining depressed over the long run as the Iran conflict and its aftermath potentially creating sustained flights from overbought tech into safe havens. Positioning against the broad economy remains sustained while OIL2 winds up from a very low base to post a staggeringly high Z-score in volume.
Over at BITA, Italian investors are executing a rapid maturation out of crypto-proxy dominance, albeit with a unique twist. The first week of March saw strong buy-ins into oil products as well as natural gas products, along with a sustained actions in different directions in crypto-proxies.
Source: Leverage Shares analysis
While the short on crypto-proxy MicroStrategy gained strength over the past week and stayed continual, volumes into the longs on Coinbase remained structurally strong and highly liquid, as is usual for Italy.
In London, the current week might see Short South Korea enter historic territory in volume runs as the probability of ADV crossing 10-15 million stays strong. With a deteriorating macro outlook, the -5x Short Nasdaq 100, the -5x Short S&P 500 and the 5x Long 20+ Year Treasury could be printing progressively higher ADVs. With strong buy-ins in energy, crypto-proxies and even shorts on Germany – where the DAX is under acute pressure given Germany’s energy import dependency and already-stressed industrial sector – this week might see breadth expand to 65%+ of tickers trading above prior full month ADVs.
In Frankfurt, the same defensive plays seen in London – Short South Korea, Short Nasdaq 100, Short S&P 500, Long 20Y Treasury, Short FTSE MIB – are likely to be in force. Historically, a $20 hike in oil prices hits US GDP by 0.1% and headline inflation by 0.4% — which means markets will immediately debate whether the Fed is now trapped. If inflation expectations reprice higher and growth expectations fall simultaneously, “duration longs” such as the Long 20Y Treasury become a sophisticated stagflation hedge. The short-S&P product had already surged +864% in March; this week could push it further. Oil & Gas product 3XEE had already showed +457% acceleration in March and this week could potentially be its highest-ever ADV.
Meanwhile in Milan, the Commodity ETC “cluster” (Brent, WTI, Natural Gas) had begun to appear in material volume and could possibly get an enormous demand catalyst in the current week. The Natural Gas ETC, in particular, is a prime candidate for a step-change in Italian retail participation this week. While MicroStrategy and Coinbase are treated as crypto-proxies, they’re also American equities, thereby making them prime candidates for selloffs. The gross volume in crypto-proxies is expected to remain enormous in the current week but the long/short split could be expected to be much closer than in prior weeks; more -3x Short MSTR activity is possible as Italians either hedge or take profit.
Across the three exchanges, the current week of March 9–13, 2026 could be shaping up to be the highest-volume week— a genuine geopolitical shock of multi-generational consequence may continue to simultaneously validate every defensive product that had been building momentum through February and early March, while potentially adding an entirely new energy commodity impulse on top of them.
For a list of all products on offer by Leverage Shares in Europe and the United Kingdom, please click here.Your capital is at risk if you invest. You could lose all your investment. Please see the full risk warning here.
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