In April 2004, the average daily number of trades on SETS™, the Exchange’s electronic order book, rose to 155,018 from 124,450 in April 2003. The value traded on SETS during the month was £69.4 billion representing a 31 per cent increase from £52.8 billion traded in April last year. There were 3.1 million trades on SETS – up 25 per cent on April 2003 – including 229,533 SETSmm trades worth £2.64 billion.
There were 4.24 million UK equity trades in the month, an increase of 22 per cent on the total of 3.49 million equity trades in April 2003. The total value of UK shares traded during the month was £178.8 billion, up 34 per cent from £133.7 billion on the corresponding period last year.
Trading in covered warrants and ETFs also showed gains with 8,891 ETF and 3,877 covered warrant trades compared to last April’s totals of 4,558 and 1,884 trades respectively.
Following 24 new admissions during the month, the number of AIM companies rose above 800 for the first time. At the end of April 2004, there were 809 AIM companies with a combined market capitalisation of £21.9 billion. This was up from 705 companies with a combined market capitalisation of £10 billion at the end of April 2003.
The primary market saw 30 new issues in April raising £409.3 million between them. Six of these were on the Main Market (five of which were IPOs) and 24 were on AIM (17 of which were IPOs). This compares with 16 new issues (five on the Main Market and 11 on AIM) in April 2003.
There were 20 business days in April 2004, which was the same number as in April 2003.
