Following a slump in trade volumes and turnover across Europe in the first quarter of this year, both value traded and number of transactions have risen in the second quarter. However, values still fall short of the levels seen in last year’s fourth quarter, when the financial crisis hit.
Total Q2 traded values across Europe were €2.02 trillion, up from Q1’s €1.76 trillion, but still short of Q4 2008’s €2.45 trillion and Q2 2008’s €2.87 trillion, according to numbers from data vendor Thomson Reuters’ European Market Share Reporter tool.
Similarly, the number of trades in Q2 increased to 224.62 million from 199.28 million in Q1. This compares with 228.36 million in Q4, but is above the 168.94 million reported in Q2 last year, indicating the continuing rise in the number of transaction volumes due to algorithmic and high-frequency trading.
The traded values of equities in Europe dropped off a cliff last November as the financial crisis took hold following the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers in September. According to the Thomson Reuters numbers, pan-European turnover fell to €680.5 billion in November 2008 from €1.3 trillion the previous month. Similarly, the number of trades fell to 67.8 million from 104.7 million.
European exchanges’ own figures paint a similar picture to the Thomson Reuters numbers. While the number of UK equities trades on the London Stock Exchange’s electronic order book in Q2 dipped slightly to 40.41 million from Q1’s 42.15 million, Q2 turnover rose to €307.38 billion from €304.62 billion in Q1.
Fellow UK exchange PLUS Markets saw a marked increase in traded value in Q2. Turnover surged to £17.45 billion (€20.19 billion) from Q1’s £12.49 billion.
Value traded on Xetra, German exchange group Deutsche Börse’s electronic trading platform and order book, increased to €265 billion in Q2 from €255 billion in Q1.
Europe’s multilateral trading facilities are also part of the growth trend. Chi-X Europe’s €209 billion turnover for Q2 was a 41% increase over Q1’s number. Equally the number of trades on Chi-X Europe in Q2 rose 40% over Q1’s number to 37.05 million.