Trading on the London Stock Exchange in 2004 began strongly with the number and value of trades in January increasing year on year across most of the exchange’s markets.
January 2004 was the strongest month yet for trading on EDX London with 2.24 million contracts traded. This was an increase of 27 per cent on the previous high in October 2003.
The value traded on SETS the Exchange’s electronic order book, was 75.4 billion during the month, rising from last year’s value of 62.1 billion. The total number of trades on SETS reached an all-time high of 3.37 million in January 2004 – a 17 per cent increase year on year. Included in these figures were 220,481 SETSmm trades worth 3.0 billion, a healthy increase on the 131,884 trades worth 1.6 billion recorded in December. The average daily number of trades on SETS rose to 160,521 from 130,806.
There were 4.76 million UK equity trades on the Exchange in January 2004, up 22 per cent on the total of 3.91 million equity trades in January 2003. The total value of UK shares traded in January 2004 was 209.7 billion, up from 148.7 billion last year.
The number of international equity trades fell from 1.16 million trades in January 2003 to 968,082 trades in January 2004, a decrease of 16 per cent. But the value of these trades was 210.2 billion compared to 177.1 billion in January 2003.
On the primary market, there were 11 new issues during January 2004, one on the Main Market and ten on AIM (three of which were IPOs) raising 84.32 million between them. This was down from the 14 new issues seen in January 2003.
There were 21 business days in January 2004 compared with 22 days in January 2003.