OId boys versus the new boyz

Just been at another fascinating conference on trading and low latency in the capitalmarkets. I’ll write more later on but, for now, thought you might be interested in these stats from Karel Lanoo, CEO of CEPS (not exceptions processing – the Council of European Policy Studies).

He compared the London Stock Exchange (LSE’s) trading and volumes before and after MiFID. Here’s the numbers:

                                                            Trades             Turnover

On order book (Electronic)     2006     78.2 million     €2.2 billion

                                            2009    156.4 million   €1.27 billion

Off order book (OTC)             2006     16.5 million    €3.77 billion

                                            2009     9.63 million   €1.28 billion

And you may think that’s down to the fact that the LSE has been hit by lower volume of trading thanks to the crisis. Yes, in part:

                Trades           Turnover

2008    2.22 million      €24.04 billion

2009    2.17 million      €14.29 billion

Yes, trading turnover was down 40.5% whilst trading volumes remained fairly constant.

So, in other words, something else had an impact.

What could that be I wonder?

Today’s Wall Street Journal

Chi-X Europe, one of the new breed of alternative trading platforms, became the second largest European equities market by value traded in January, leapfrogging incumbent exchanges including the London Stock Exchange (LSE.LN) and Deutsche Boerse (DB1.XE) for the first time. Trading levels for European equities on the electronic order book of the London-based platform, known as a multilateral trading facility, were valued at EUR109 billion ($147 billion) during January, according to figures released today by the Federation of European Securities Exchanges.