All the big equity cash and futures exchanges reported higher volumes as US sub-prime mortgage worries led to a spike in volatility. Trading in pure volatility products also surged, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) expanded its suite of volatility offerings.
The London Stock Exchange reports that in the five months to August 2007, the average daily numbers of bargains on its Sets electronic order book rose 75% to 551,000, clearing its target level of 480,000 for the full year. Sets trades exceeded a million on three days in August, with the average daily number of deals in the month at a record high of 688,391. For the entire LSE market, total average daily trades went up by more than 30% from July to August, from 719,129 to 943,352 deals. Despite the credit crunch and general market uncertainty, the LSE says new issues for the five months to August rose to 216, with the main market more than doubling its new issues to 68. New issues on Aim, the market for smaller companies, fell from 177 to 147.
Euronext Liffe, the derivatives market of transatlantic exchange group NYSE Euronext, traded just short of 104 million contracts in August, a new record, and its Frankfurt competitor, Eurex, did 175 million trades, a 64% year-on-year increase for the month.