By the end of 2025, South-East Europe could point to an undeniable achievement. Intraday electricity trading volumes across the region had reached levels that would have seemed unattainable only a few years earlier. Record after record was set, particularly in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia. Market operators and policymakers often presented this surge as evidence that SEE power markets had reached functional maturity. Yet for risk managers and industrial buyers, the lived experience told a different story. Despite booming intraday liquidity, long-term price risk remained stubbornly intact.
The misunderstanding stemmed from a conflation of operational liquidity with risk-bearing capacity. Intraday markets are designed to manage short-term imbalances. They allow participants to fine-tune positions as forecasts change, renewable output fluctuates, or unexpected outages occur. In 2025, these markets performed this role exceptionally well. Monthly intraday volumes exceeded 600 GWh on IBEX, surpassed 1 TWh on HUPX, and reached record highs on SEEPEX. Balancing costs fell, and real-time system stability improved.
However, none of this addressed the core problem faced by industrial buyers and utilities: exposure to multi-month and multi-year price volatility. Intraday liquidity does not accumulate open interest. Positions are opened and closed within hours. Risk is transferred briefly, not warehoused. Once delivery passes, the market resets. From a hedging perspective, this liquidity evaporates as quickly as it appears.
In 2025, this distinction became painfully clear during periods of structural stress. When hydro output dropped sharply in parts of the Balkans or when thermal units tripped unexpectedly, intraday markets reacted efficiently, but prices adjusted violently. Participants could rebalance volumes, yet the price level shock propagated forward through expectations, widening forward spreads and increasing basis volatility. Intraday liquidity absorbed operational shocks, but it amplified informational ones.
This dynamic produced a false sense of security. Many market participants believed that deeper intraday trading reduced overall risk because it allowed constant adjustment. In reality, it shifted risk temporally rather than eliminating it. Volatility was compressed into shorter windows, increasing the frequency of price spikes and dips without reducing their magnitude over longer horizons.
For industrial consumers, the consequences were tangible. Facilities that actively optimised intraday positions still faced annual cost deviations of ±10 €/MWh relative to budgeted hedge levels. For a 40 MW consumer, this meant ±3.5 million € of variance despite near-perfect operational execution. Intraday optimisation reduced imbalance penalties but did nothing to stabilise the average cost of power.
Utilities experienced a similar paradox. Improved intraday trading reduced balancing costs and forecast error losses, yet forward margins remained volatile. Earnings sensitivity to weather and cross-border congestion persisted. The forward curve continued to move independently of intraday conditions, driven by macro-level supply expectations rather than real-time liquidity.
By late 2025, sophisticated participants began reframing intraday markets for what they truly were: operational shock absorbers, not financial risk sinks. They recognised that intraday liquidity improves efficiency and reduces system stress, but it does not substitute for deep forward markets. Without the ability to lock in prices months or years ahead with minimal basis risk, long-term exposure remains fundamentally unchanged.
The lesson was subtle but critical. Market maturity is not measured by how fast electricity can be traded, but by how long risk can be held. In SEE, intraday liquidity matured rapidly. Long-term risk absorption did not. Confusing the two led to overconfidence in hedging strategies and underestimation of residual exposure. The 2025 experience forced a correction in that thinking, separating operational excellence from financial resilience.
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