The Great Volume Expansion

US market volume has been expanding enormously since 2005. There has been a lot of scuttlebutt this year regarding a lack of volume, usually referring to NYSE trading because of its availability. The chart below shows NYSE floor volume as reported by the exchange in red (this is the same number you would find on WSJ.com or any other data provider). As shown, NYSE volume is largely unchanged since 2000 because there are actually four key stock exchanges in the US: the New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ, the NYSE Arca, and the FINRA ADF.

By digging deeper and looking at total volume for NYSE issues, we find that there is significantly more trading than many people realize. To calculate total volume, shown below in green, we added shares traded on all US exchanges for each NYSE listed stock, and then added all of the stocks' volumes for a given day. Using this methodology we find that on 11/6/09 total volume for NYSE issues was actually 4.89 billion shares versus NYSE volume of 1.29 billion shares.

click to enlarge

Comments

[DudeKabob:]

And...? Hello? Anyone home?

Nov 10 01:51 PM

[earlybird:]

very poor research, disappointed how misleading you wrote this article. the NYSE and other exchanges now include options trading, bond trading, rights trading, warrants trading in cumulative volume. You didn't subtract this from your calculation?

oh OK, waste of an article and now your credibility is in the gutters too.

Nov 10 09:36 PM