PLUS Markets announced on Monday a strong start to 2008 with 397,419 trades reported in January, an increase of 92% on December 2007. The total value of trades was £2.8 billion, up 61%, and the number of shares traded was 1.7 billion, up 70%. Trading activity on PLUS has seen a strong upward trend over the three months since the launch of its new trading platform in November 2007, according to the firm.
The average daily number of trades on PLUS in January rose to 18,065 trades (up from 10,901 in December), reaching a daily peak of 34,007 on 22 January. Also on that date, PLUS reports its market share (53%) of all UK retail trading activity exceeded that of competitor the London Stock Exchange (47%) for the first time. PLUS' total retail market share for the month of January was 39%.
PLUS says it continued to capture market share in some of the heaviest traded UK stocks during January, including Marks & Spencer (8.13% of total trades in the month), Standard Life (5.61%) and Royal Bank of Scotland (5.58%).
According to PLUS, there were 433 small and mid-cap securities in which 50% or more of their trades during January took place on PLUS and not the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Of the 78 AIM securities dual-trading on PLUS, PLUS attracted approximately 40% of total trading activity. Additionally, PLUS says the number of companies on the PLUS-quoted market has now risen to 218, worth a total of £2.3 billion, with more in the pipeline.
"These are encouraging numbers which demonstrate that under MiFID, transaction volume is flowing to PLUS Markets," comments Cyril Théret, business development director, PLUS Markets. "Brokers recognise PLUS as a competitive trading venue across all equity segments and as liquidity continues to build, it is creating firm foundations for new listing and quotation possibilities," he adds.