By Steven Hatzakis
Total turnover across all cash-settled asset classes from Deutsche Börse's (DE:DB1Gn) Tradegate Exchange, Borse Frankfurt and Xetra business lines, had aggregate orderbook volumes of €130.7 billion for February 2016, up 4.14% or €5.2 billion year-over year (YoY) from €125.5 billion.
The exchange operator said that most of the volumes were attributed to Xetra which rang in €120.7 billion for the month, higher YoY from €113.4 billion. Nearly 26 million trades were executed on Xetra, a nearly 45% rise from 18 million in February of 2015. The news follows the recent merger talks with LSE, and the company's FinTech initiatives as recently covered by Finance Magnates.
Interestingly, the average daily volume on Xetra remained unchanged for February when compared YoY at €5.7 billion, which can be deduced as related to the extra day of the leap year, consequently diluting the reported ADV lower despite the higher overall volume total.
Leap year manifests in mixed results
While it’s not clear if the extra day accounted for the €7.3 billion difference in volumes, it’s safe to say it was the reason for the diluted ADV as the YoY comparison is not for an identical number of trading days in the month. Nonetheless, unchanged ADV and growth is still better than lower ADV and no growth, so the exchange is starting the leap-year strong.
The smaller portion of volume totals went to Borse Frankfurt including €4 billion for February 2016, 22.5% lower from €4.9 billion YoY, despite the extra day this February. Order book turnover on the Tradegate exchange was roughly €6 billion in February and down 20% from €7.2 billion for the same period last year, also not benefiting from the extra day enough to show growth.
Xetra leads volumes on equities
In terms of asset classes, equities contributed to roughly €111.0 billion over the volume in February according to the company’s press release, and turnover in exchange-traded funds (ETFs), notes (ETNs) and commodities (ETCs) totaled €17.4 billiob.
The company said that structured products totaled €1.5 billion in turnover, and bond turnover was €700 million for the month, with funds trailing at €200 million. The XETRA security with the highest volume was DAX-listed Daimler AG (DE:DAIGn) at €7.8 billion, and Metro AG was leading the MDAX-listed equities with €813 million in turnover, among other leaders noted for its SDAX and TecDAX indices.
The ETF with the most turnover on Xetra was the iSharesCore DAX UCITS (DE:GDAXIEX) ETF with €1.7 billion, as traders continue to love to speculate on the DAX overall - just as the index is popular among CFD speculators that seek to trade a DAX-tracked CFD derivative. The group recent merger talks were also covered by Finance Magnates.