Tokyo-Osaka merger buoyed as regional volumes soar

The Tokyo and Osaka exchanges have inched back market share from rival proprietary trading systems in their first month of trading as the Japan Exchange, a combined exchange. Meantime, overall Asian equity volumes hit a 22-month high.

By None

The Tokyo and Osaka exchanges have inched back market share from rival proprietary trading systems (PTS) in their first month of trading as the Japan Exchange (JPX), a combined exchange. Meantime, overall Asian equity volumes hit a 22-month high.

Market share data from Thomson Reuters showed that the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) maintained its grasp on the market with 89.5% of market share in January – near identical to last month – trading US$446.4 billion. However, the Osaka Securities Exchanges (OSE) reaped 4.95% of market share with US$24.6 billion traded, a surge from 4.18% in December.

Overall, Japan experienced the highest month of volume traded since March 2011 with US$498.4 billion traded. This was mirrored throughout the region as equity trading volumes rose to US$1.7 trillion – also the highest month since March 2011.

January marked the first month the TSE and OSE have traded as JPX after last year’s US$1.6 billion merger. The new entity’s two cash-equity platforms will be merged by July and their derivative operations by March 2014.

Japan’s leading PTS, SBI Japannext, saw a drop off in the growth it enjoyed last month, as market share hit 3.25%, or US$16.1 billion, in Japanese equities. This was the lowest market share figures the PTS had posted since April, and a marked decline from last month’s 3.95%.

Chi-X Japan, the country’s second largest PTS by volume traded, also experienced a lull in January, with market share sinking to 2.22% with just over US$11 billion traded. In December the PTS garnered 2.60% of market share.

Further south, the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) relinquished additional equities activity to the country’s first alternative exchange. Chi-X Australia, which celebrated its one-year anniversary in October, reached 11.01% of market share in S&P ASX 200 shares with A$7.4 billion traded, up from last month’s figures of 9.38% of market share and A$5.2 billion traded.

The ASX traded 88.4% of those shares in January with A$59.4 billion, down from 89.5% in December.

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