A representative part of the members of the Bund Issues Auction Group voluntarily report their trades in Federal securities (Bubills, Schaetze, Bobls, Bunds, green Federal securities and inflation-linked Federal securities) - categorized by type of Federal security traded, by region and by institutional form of the trading partner. Based on trading volumes and net positions, this allows the Finance Agency to identify rough structures of the secondary market trading.

The gross trading volume is derived by adding up the reported sales and purchase volumes of the auction group banks. The net trading volume is the balance of sales minus purchase volumes.

For example, a net position of € -22 bn vis-à-vis brokers corresponds to a € 22 bn higher volume of purchases by auction group members from brokers than sales to brokers. The trading data published here are provisional, as later subsequent submissions may lead to corrections.

Comparison ot Trading Volumes 1st Half-year 2025 vs. 1st Half-year 2024

At € 3,683 bn, the first half of 2025 continues the upward trend in total trading volume in the first half of a year that began in 2020. However, the increase of around € 47 bn compared with the first half of 2024 represents only a marginal 1 %. On a half-year basis, the outstanding nominal volume of federal securities (excluding federal government's own holdings) rose much more strongly, by 4 % to around € 1,711 bn.

The main factors behind the significantly stronger trading activities since 2022 seem to be:

• the highest outstanding volume of Federal securities to date, which is expected to continue rising
• the significant increase in yields
• the shifts in the holder structure of Federal securities in favour of more interest rate-sensitive and more trading-friendly investors - in particular due to the scaling back of the two ECB purchase programmes that began in 2022

Traditionally, the summer holiday months lead to lower issuance and trading activity in the second half of the year. Therefore, trading volumes for the first half of the year are compared with each other.

Net Trading Volume

The last time net purchases were lower than in the first half of 2025 (€ 110 bn) was in the first half of 2020 (€ 105 bn). Although the issuance volume, which correlates strongly with net purchases, declined by only around 10 % to approximately € 212 bn when comparing the first half-years of 2024 and 2025, net purchases fell by 36 %, which shows that the banking sector, especially the banks in the bidding group, absorbed a significant portion of the issue volume.

By far the strongest growth among counterparties was seen in trading with pension funds, whose turnover was almost 54 % higher than in the first half-year of 2024 – a level last reached in 2011. Less significantly, trading volumes with brokers, i.e. in particular anonymous trading via electronic trading platforms, rose by 14 %. For the first time since 2021, brokers thus replaced asset managers as the counterparties with the highest turnover, whose trading fell by 8 % to a still comparatively high volume. Insurance companies traded 11 % more, central banks around 5 %. Banks and hedge funds reduced their trading activities slightly by 3 % each, although hedge funds only fell to the third-highest level in their history in the first half-year of 2025. Other investors, mainly non-financial companies and private investors, were 20 % less active in trading Federal securities.

Despite a significant decline in gross trading volume, net purchases by other investors more than doubled to over € 5 bn. In contrast, the increase in purchases by banks was less dynamic at 37 %, but still represented a new record for them with a volume of more than € 48 bn. In the second half of 2024, they succeeded in replacing asset managers as the second most important net buyers for the first time since 2021. Banks were able to further extend their lead in the first half-year of 2025 thanks to an 18 % decline in net purchases by asset managers, which amounted to € 31 bn. Insurance companies also reduced their purchases by 33 % to € 3 bn on balance, which is still a historically high level. Compared to the first half-year of 2024, net purchases by central banks also fell significantly, by 43 %. However, € 54 bn secures them the title of most important buyers in the statistics, with a few exceptions. Pension funds, which have been buying steadily at a level of well over € 3 bn since the second half-year of 2019, acquired € 4 bn net in the first half-year of 2025, 65 % less than a year ago. After hedge funds acquired a record sum of almost € 54 bn in the first half of 2023, purchases of € 33 bn in the second half of 2024 have now turned into marginal net sales of less than € 1 bn in the first half-year.