Trading levels at the London Stock Exchange have risen 22%, despite the gloom surrounding financial markets this year, it emerged today.
The exchange will deal with around 50 million trades in the coming year – a sharp increase on this year’s record figure of 41 million.
The rapid growth mirrors the development of the exchange’s electronic trading platform SETS, introduced four years ago. It was the subject of £12m worth of enhancements earlier this month that will treble the capacity of the system.
The increased popularity of hedging on the stock market has also boosted business in a period of falling prices.
A London Stock Exchange spokesman added: “There’s not necessarily any correlation between the performance of the Footsie and trading activity.”
Trading through the exchange’s electronic order book accounted for as much as 63% of the value of trades in SETS stocks in any one month.
Chief information officer David Lester said: “Electronic trading on our markets continued to grow at a phenomenal rate this year. Our customers clearly value our electronic order book.”
The overall number of SETS trades was a record 15.9 million this year, outstripping the previous record of 8.6 million last year.
EGi News 20/12/01
