According to the orderbook statistics, which are based on single counting of all transactions in the orderbook of Xetra and broker-supported trading on the floor, the total turnover in equities on the German stock exchanges was 73.7 billion euros in March, which represents an increase of about 31 percent compared with the previous month (February 2003: 56.5 billion euros). Of this volume, 69.5 billion euros was traded in German equities, and 4.2 billion euros in foreign equities.
In March, 99 percent of the volume in German equities was posted on Xetra and the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FWB Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse). In the foreign equities, about 82 percent of the volume was posted on Xetra and the Frankfurt trading floor. A new record was set in March for the number of trades on Xetra with 6.7 million trades (October 2002: 6.6 million trades).
Siemens was the most liquid equity in the DAX® in March based on the Xetra Liquidity Measure (XLM), with 16 bp for an order size of 100,000 euros; in the MDAX®, Wella was highest with 38 bp. The most liquid equity-based exchange-traded fund was the DAX EX with 11 bp. XLM analyzes the liquidity in electronic securities trading based on the implicit transaction costs and is calculated in basis points (1 bp = 0.01 percent) for all securities in continuous trading, for a roundtrip in the Xetra orderbook.
Siemens was the highest-volume DAX blue chip in March with 6.4 billion euros traded in its shares. Wella was the leading MDAX stock with 446.6 million euros in volume traded. The highest-turnover exchange-traded fund was again the DAX EX with 1.7 billion euros in volume traded.