Intercontinental Exchanges (ICE) March Volume Improves Y/Y

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc.’s (NYSE:ICE) average daily volume (ADV) in March increased 2.4% to 6 million largely backed by improved Financial ADV. However, lower Commodities ADV partially offset the increase. The company reported 11.2% year-over-year increase in Financials volume that rose to 3.2 million contracts per day. There were 21 trading days in March.

Agriculture and Metals ADV of 0.4 million contracts slipped 0.2%. Energy volume too dropped about 6.9% to 2.4 million contracts per day. Thus, Commodities ADV dropped nearly 6% to 2.8 million in March.

Interest Rate volume increased 15.9% to 2.5 million contracts per day whereas Equity Index volume dropped 4% to 0.6 million contracts. Foreign exchange volume was down 5.5% to nearly 0.03 million contracts.

Revenues per contract were 12 cents for the month, down 7.7% year over year.

Shares of Intercontinental Exchange have outperformed the industry year to date. The stock has rallied 2.6% compared with the industry’s decrease of 2.3%. The company’s product portfolio, along with a broad range of risk management services, strategic buyouts and a robust capital position will likely help the stock retain its growth momentum. Intercontinental Exchange currently carries Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Recently, securities exchanges, namely CME Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CME) and MarketAxess Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ:MKTX) and Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (NYSE:CBOE) also posted their respective monthly volumes.

CME Group’s ADV declined 8% year over year in March as volumes declined across all the six product lines. MarketAxess reported trading volume of $182.7 billion for March. Total volume included $96.8 billion in U.S. high-grade volume, $81.8 billion in other credit volume and $4.0 billion in liquid products volume. Cboe Global reported weak average daily volume (ADV) for March 2019. Total ADV of 7.3 million contracts declined 13.2% year over year due to weak performance across the business lines — Options, Futures, U.S. Equities and European Equities.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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