Dow Up, But Trading Volume Down
March 12, 2013
The Dow Jones Industrial Average may be up 1,343.15, or 10.2 percent, for the year and at an all-time record.
But overall trading in equities is down, nonetheless, from last year.
Average daily volume on all equities trading exchanges, venues and systems in February was 6.6 billion shares, according to Nasdaq OMX Group statistics. That is down 5.3 percent from the average of 6.9 billion recorded in both January and February of 2012.
Volume did gain 2.3 percent from the 6.4 billion shares traded on an average day in the first month of this year, according to Nasdaq.
The Nasdaq Stock Market had the greatest share of overall trading, at 15.8 percent of all matched volume, according to BATS Global Markets statistics.
The New York Stock Exchange and its all-electronic relative NYSE Arca had 11.0 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively. The BATS Z Exchange came in fourth at 9.1% and the Direct Edge EDGX Exchange was fifth at 6.7 percent.
The one-time American Stock Exchange, now known as NYSE MKT, had the smallest share among all 13 national exchanges. It accounted for three-tenths of a percent of all matched volume.
All told, the NYSE, NYSE Arca and NYSE MKT handled 1.6 billion shares a day in February. That is down 11.9 percent from a year ago, but up 0.6 percent from January.
Nasdaq’s markets – the Nasdaq Stock Market, as well as BX and PSX exchanges, handled 23.9 billion shares all told in February. That was up a hare from 23.7 billion in January, but down 20 percent from 29.8 billion a year ago for the same month.
BATS’ two markets handled 727 million shares on an average day in February, by its count; Direct Edge’s two exchanges handled 789 million shares, by its count.
