Nasdaq (NDAQ) Reports Robust May Volumes, Stock Rallies

Shares of Nasdaq, Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ) gained 6% in the last couple of trading sessions after the company recorded solid volumes for May 2019. While U.S. equity options volume increased 10% year over year to 154 million contracts, European options and futures volume increased 14.5% year over year to 8.7 million contracts.

Under its cash equities, Nasdaq’s U.S. matched equity volume in May grossed 31.8 billion shares, up 16.2% from the prior-year quarter. However, European equity volume dropped nearly 22% year over year to $64 billion.

U.S. fixed income volume declined 31.9% year over year to $1.1 trillion whereas European fixed income volume decreased 23.1% year over year to 2 million.

Nasdaq remains focused on its goals of maximizing opportunities as an innovative analytics and technology partner in the capital markets, developing and deploying marketplace economy technology strategy and consolidating competitive edge in its core businesses. The company expects to witness growth in its index and analytics businesses, followed by moderate growth in its exchange data products across U.S. and Nordic equities, options and fixed income businesses.

The company also intends to strengthen its core special marketplace platform businesses but plans to lower capital resources for investment in business that do not offer considerable growth.

The company is ramping up its non-transaction revenue base, which includes market technology, listing and information revenues. It is also expanding its technology and analytics offerings. Shares of Nasdaq have rallied 17.9% year to date compared with the industry's increase of 12.4%.

Nasdaq currently carries Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

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

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

CME Group average daily volume increased 19% year over year in May to 23.9 million contracts, riding on increased volumes across four product lines. MarketAxess reported trading volume of $174 billion for May. Total volume included $89.3 billion in U.S. high-grade volume, $80.6 billion in other credit volume and $4.1 billion in liquid products volume. Cboe Global reported solid average daily volume for May 2019 as total ADV of 8.5 million contracts increased 21.6% year over year.

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