The World Federation of Exchanges has today published its Market Highlights Report for the 2015 calendar year.
- China, India remain main drivers of global trading activity
- FX, commodities fuel 12% rise in exchange-traded derivatives
- Global market capitalization slips 1% from 2014, as EMEA and South America see falls
Total value of share trading rose 41% in 2015 and the number of trades 55% from 2014, according to WFE's full-year statistics. The increases were driven predominantly by trading activity in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly mainland China.
Despite the significant volatility witnessed through the year, Asia-Pacific markets still managed to end the year up 10% in terms of market capitalization compared to the end of 2014.
The main highlights of the year were as follows:
- The value of share trading rose 41% worldwide to USD 114 trillion in 2015 compared with USD 81 trillion in 2014. Most of the increase is attributable to the rise in trading activity in the Asia-Pacific region where the value of share trading rose 127% from that seen in 2014. The total value of Asia-Pacific share trading in 2015 approached USD 54 trillion, putting it ahead of other regions in terms of the total value of share trading.
- Total number of trades in 2015 increased 55% from 2014, ending the year at 23.7 billion (up from 15.3 billion in 2014). Again, Asia-Pacific was responsible for most of the increase. The region saw a 94% rise in the number of trades from 2014, from just over 8 billion to 15.5 billion trades in 2015.
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Global market capitalization decreased 1.3% in 2015 compared with the end of 2014, to reach USD 67 trillion compared with USD 68 trillion at the end of 2014. The Americas led this fall (down nearly 8% by the end of 2015), followed by EMEA, which fell just over 3%. Asia-Pacific market capitalization ended the year at 23 trillion USD, up from USD 21 trillion at the end of 2015.
- WFE's H1 2015 Market Highlights report already pointed out that China's markets accounted for a large proportion of the rise in 2015 trading activity. The value of share trading in China increased 218% from USD 13.5 trillion to USD 43.0 trillion and the number of trades rose 186% on 2014 to reach 10.1 billion at the end of 2015.
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IPOs and investment flows: Total new listings in 2015 (including IPOs) registered a 9.6% increase overall, although investment flows from IPOs alone declined by nearly 17% compared to 2014 (USD 202 billion in 2015 as compared to 242 billion in 2014). Other investment flows for already listed companies, however, were up by over 41% at USD 914 billion in 2015 compared with 2014.
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Exchange Traded Derivatives (ETD) volumes (as represented by number of contracts traded) ended the year 11.6% up in 2015, fueled mainly by increases in the number of commodity and currency derivatives traded.
Click here for the full report.