Several of Europe’s major stock exchanges have reported significant declines in equities trading volume and value for the full year of 2009 compared with 2008, but activity in exchange-traded funds bucked the general trend.
German exchange group Deutsche Börse’s cash equities market reported total 2009 turnover of €1.14 trillion, a 50% drop from 2008’s €2.26 trillion.
Other exchanges experienced similar declines. Spanish exchange group Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME) saw its equity trading turnover fall 27.8% to €897.2 billion in 2009, and the number of trades slip by 14.4% to 31.6 million.
SIX Swiss Exchange’s equities turnover, including funds and exchange-traded structured funds, fell 46.6% to CHF 872.1 billion (€587.5 billion) in 2009, and the number of equities trades dropped 23.5% to 32.2 trillion.
The exchanges’ figures echo the trend across Europe. According to figures from data vendor Thomson Reuters, total equities trading turnover for the continent in 2009 was €7.56 trillion, a 68.5% drop from 2008’s €24.05 trillion. Trading volumes across Europe fell to 1.15 trillion trades, down 48.5% from 2008’s 2.23 trillion.
Although equity volumes and values were down, some exchanges reported growth in ETF trading. BME’s ETF trade volume in 2009, for example, was up 99% on 2008’s number to 50,789. While turnover in all its other segments were down in 2009 compared with 2008, SIX Swiss Exchange’s ETF turnover was up 28.1% to CHF 50.6 billion and ETF trade volume was up 59.8% to 464.4 billion trades.
It appears that some US exchanges may have fared better in 2009 than their European counterparts. BATS Exchange’s average daily matched volume was 1 billion shares in 2009, a 20% increase from 2008’s 830.6 million. BATS Europe, the exchange’s pan-European multilateral trading facility, ended 2009 with average daily value traded of €917 million, compared with €228 million in January 2009 alone. BATS Europe started trading on October 31 2008.