December’s trading represented a strong finish to 2004. During the year, the total value of equities traded on the Exchange was £4.7 trillion, a 30 per cent increase on the value traded in 2003. The average daily value traded in 2004 was £18.6 billion, an increase of 29 per cent on the average daily value traded the previous year. There were 66.30 million trades on the Exchange during 2004, an 18 per cent increase on the number of trades in 2003. The average daily number of trades across the Exchange in 2004 was up 18 per cent on 2003 to 261,011.
SETS saw an average of 167,158 trades each day during December 2004, amounting to 3.51 million trades during the month with a total value of £64.7 billion. This was an increase of 22 per cent in the value traded and 31 per cent in the number of trades on SETS compared with December 2003. The total value of equities traded on SETS in 2004 was £878.6 billion, an increase of 23 per cent on the value traded on SETS the previous year. The average daily number of trades on SETS throughout 2004 was 160,901, up 24 per cent on the previous year.
On SETSmm there were 334,738 order book trades during December, worth a total of £3.5 billion. This brought the total number of order book trades on SETSmm during the year to 3.38 million, and the total value traded to £37.8 billion.
During 2004 there were 49,202 trades on the covered warrants market, worth a total of £443.33 million. This was a 74 per cent increase on the value traded in covered warrants during 2003. The total number of ETF trades in the year as a whole rose 66 per cent to 104,412 whilst the value traded in ETFs during 2004 rose to £4.6 billion, an increase of 37 per cent on the value traded in 2003.
During December there were 7 IPOs on the London Stock Exchange’s main market, raising £724.93 million between them and 41 IPOs on AIM, raising £379.01 million. Over the course of the year there were 293 IPOs, of which 50 were on the main market and 243 were on AIM. IPOs on the main market raised a total of £4.8 billion between them, while AIM IPOs raised £2.4 billion.
By the end of 2004 there were 2,837 companies on the London Stock Exchange. Of these 1,816 companies were on the Main Market, including 351 international companies and 1,021 were on AIM, including 116 international companies.
There were 21 trading days in December 2004, the same number as in December 2003. There were 254 trading days in the year as a whole, compared with 253 in 2003.
