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BATS Gains Share, Even as Volume Drops 47%

September 6, 2012
Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

 BATS Global Markets said Thursday its share of U.S. trading in stocks reached a record 12.8% in August.

But its trading volume dropped 46.8%. Average daily volume on its two national exchanges in August was 693.6 million shares. A year ago, daily volume averaged 1.3 billion shares.

August in 2011, however, was the most active month of the entire year. At its outset, Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. debt for the first time, roiling markets. Average daily volume on all national exchanges was 7.6 billion shares, according to statistics kept by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Volume in July 2011 had been 5.0 billion and volume in September fell back to 6.1 billion shares.

In addition, activity is down 16.1 percent overall, so far this year. According to SIFMA’s stats, daily trading on NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX, Direct Edge and BATS national exchanges is averaging 4.7 billion shares. In 2011, trading averaged 5.6 billion shares a day.

BATS’ market share was up half a percent from July, when it hit 12.3%. In Europe, BATS said it also hit new highs. These included Germany, 29%, Denmark, 22.3% and Autria, 18.7%.

BATS operates BATS Chi-X Europe, a pan-European exchange that has become the largest stock market operation on the continent, besting the London Stock Exchange. But its share fell to 23.8% from 24.6% in July.

Separately:

  • TMX Group said volume on the Toronto Stock Exchange in August was down 42%, compared to a year earlier. Daily volume fell to 244.4 million shares, from 275.6 million in July and 423.8 million in August 2011.
  • The Singapore Exchange said its volume of trading fell 29% in August, from a year earlier, in dollar terms. Turnover was $29.4 billion in Singapore dollars or $1.4 billion a day.
  • The Australian Securities Exchange said its volume of trading was down 38%, year over year. For the month, the value of trading fell from $147.5 billion Australian dollars, to $90.8 billion. On a daily basis, the drop was from $6.4 billion to $3.9 billion.
  • SIX Swiss Exchange and Scoach Switzerland said they carried out a total of 2,425,595 trades in Augut, a drop of 12.7% from July. However, turnover was up 0.2% 69.1 billion Swiss francs. No comparisons were made to August 2011.