The number of trades on SETS, the London Stock Exchange’s electronic order book, increased 21 per cent in November 2002 to 2.38 million trades compared with 1.96 million in November 2001. The average daily number of trades on SETS increased from 88,991 trades in November 2001 to 113,122 trades in November 2002, an increase of 27 per cent. However, the value traded on SETS decreased by seven per cent, from 62.6 billion in November 2001 to 58.4 billion in 2002. There were 21 trading days in November 2002 compared with 22 in November 2001.
The average daily number of UK and international trades on the Exchange decreased four per cent, from 232,840 in November 2001 to 222,793 in November 2002.
On the primary market there were 13 new issues during November 2002, 2 of which were IPOs, 1 on the Main Market and 1 on AIM, raising 153 million between them. (November 2001: 8 IPOs – 2 on the Main Market, 6 on AIM, together raising 30.71 million).
Covered warrants were offered for the first time through the London Stock Exchange on Monday 28 October 2002. During the first five weeks of trading, there were 899 trades at a value of 3.05 million. A total of 253 warrants were issued to the end of November 2002, between four issuers – Goldman Sachs International, JP Morgan, SG and TradingLab.
Covered warrants are now available on some of the UK’s leading companies and international indices. These include BP, GlaxoSmithKline and Vodafone, as well as the FTSE100, NASDAQ100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average indices.