The Singapore Exchange (SGX), a securities exchange operator, released its monthly trading report for May. Today’s release shows that the exchange operator saw an increase in the value of total shares traded despite a decrease in the total number of shares traded and an equal number of trading days.

At the end of April, SGX reported that it had facilitated the trading of 37.93 million shares on its exchanges. Today, the Singaporean firm reported that this number had shrunk to 36.33 million in May - a month on month decrease of just over 4 percent.

Traders may have been less active last month but, fortunately for the exchange, the total value of trades that occurred was greater than in April. As a result, the total securities market turnover for May was equal to $28.19 billion. This was a 5.5 percent increase on April for which SGX reported total turnover in the securities market of $26.72 billion.

Same number of trading days, increase in average trading volume

This increase was not a result of a longer trading month. Both April and May had 21 trading days. As a result, average daily trading was greater in May too. In April, SGX reported the value of average daily trading as $1.27 billion, and in May this figure grew to $1.34 billion.

The increase in trading value was largely attributable to growth in non-Singaporean dollar trading on SGX's mainboard. Last month the exchange reported a total trading value of $1.47 billion in non-Singaporean dollar trading on the mainboard. In April this number grew to $2.56 billion, representing an approximately 74 percent month on month increase.