WFE publishes 2016 Market Highlights

By: The WFE Focus Team Feb 2017

On 10 February 2017, the WFE published its 2016 Market Highlights.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Global market capitalisation was up 4.4%.
  • Value of share trading and the number of trades declined by 26.9% and 15.5%.
  • The number of newly listed companies and investment flows through IPOs were down 35.8% and 36.8% respectively.
  • Exchange Traded Derivatives (ETD) volumes ended the year 2% down on 2015, driven by the drop in volumes of equity derivatives and stock index derivatives traded.

According to the WFE’s full-year statistics, the key trends of 2016 were as follows:

[charts]

  • Global market capitalisation was up 4.4% on 2015, driven by the 10.8% and 0.9% rise in the Americas and EMEA regions respectively. Asia-Pacific ended the year down 0.5% versus the end of 2015. Global market capitalisation in H2 2016 increased relative to H1 2016 by 5.7% overall.
  • Globally the value of share trading and the number of trades declined by 26.9% and 15.5% on 2015, driven primarily by the 47.2% and 26.1% drop in these figures in the Asia-Pacific region.
  • The number of newly listed companies, investment flows through IPOs and non-IPO investment flows were all down (35.8%, 36.8% and 24.7% respectively) on 2015.
  • Exchange Traded Derivatives (ETD) volumes (as represented by number of contracts traded) ended the year 2% down on 2015, driven by a drop in volumes of equity derivatives and stock index derivatives. The full year saw a reversal of the trend observed in H1 2016, when the growth in volumes of commodity and currency derivatives saw ETD volumes up by 1.4% on H1 2015.
  • Volumes traded in single stock options and futures dropped by 9.2% and 14.5% respectively. The Americas, where 79.4% of options contracts are traded, and the EMEA region, where 53% of single stock futures are traded, experienced a decline in volumes of 10.3% and 15.5% respectively.
  • Equity index based options and futures saw volumes decline by 16.6% and 15.7% respectively. Divergent trends were witnessed across regions. The Asia-Pacific region experienced a sharp drop in volumes traded in index options and futures (down 43% and 49.6%) respectively, whereas the EMEA and Americas regions saw a pickup in number of contracts traded in these products versus 2015.
  • Volume of commodity options and futures traded saw a pickup in all regions with a worldwide increase of 10.5% and 28.7% respectively. The Americas, which account for about 80% of commodity options contracts traded, and the Asia-Pacific region, where 68% of commodity futures are traded, were the drivers of this change, with growth rates of 9.4% and 26.7% respectively. Volumes were driven by the pickup in energy assets such as natural gas and oil, metals including silver and iron ore, and agricultural commodities like soybean and sugar.
  • For currency futures, the volume traded in 2016 was 4.7% higher than in 2015. However, this includes a 5.6% decrease in the number of contracts traded in the EMEA region, where over 46% of the world’s currency futures are traded.

Click here to view the report in full.