After a strong January, the Spanish Exchange , Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME), has published its trading volumes for February of 2019, with the exchange yet again reporting a strong uptick in fixed income trading.
During the month of February, the fixed income segment managed to maintain high activity levels on the BME. Traded volume for the month was €28.75 billion, which, although lower than January’s highs by 13.9 percent, is still a significant 85.3 percent higher than that achieved in February 2018. Year-to-date, this represents a growth of 77.9 percent.
The uptick in trading volumes comes despite a drop in new issues. Specifically, in February the number of new issues was 21,315 which is 65.9 percent less than January and down 29.7 percent year-on-year.
The outstanding balance for fixed income, however, managed to record gains on both a monthly and annual basis, increasing by 0.7 percent from January and 1.6 percent from February of 2018.
ETF and Equities Market Post Weak Performance on BME
Trading volume in the exchange-traded fund (ETF) segment of the BME, however, was not as strong in February, reaching €127 million. When measured against the previous month, this represents a drop of 37.4 percent and a 68.4 percent decline from the same month a year earlier.
As can be expected, the number of trades made in February in the ETF segment also fell to 4,627. Comparing this to the previous month, 16.9 percent fewer traders were made in February, and 64.5 percent less on a year-on-year comparison.
Taking a look at Equities, the Spanish Exchange traded €32.32 billion in Equities in the month of February 2019. Similar to the ETF segment, this is a weaker result than that achieved in January by 22 percent and in February 2018 by 30.6 percent.
Contributing to this decline is the number of trades made in the month, which were considerably less. Specifically, the number of trades was 2.8 million, which represents a fall of 21.8 percent month-on-month and 37 percent from February 2018.
