Shares digital

Continuing market volatility is benefiting the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and inter-deal broker ICAP (IAP) as traders rush to keep up with the latest price movements.

Both institutions have provided their latest quarterly updates, with the LSE revealing average daily volumes on its SETS electronic order book running at around 900,000 in January. This puts the exchange on course to break its previous all-time daily average high of 688,391 million trades, achieved in August.

Meanwhile ICAP – which is benefiting from volatility in interest rates, foreign exchange, energy and the credit markets – reported that activity levels were higher in January than that experienced during the summer’s ups and downs.

Having come off with the rest of the market during the new year sell off, LSE and ICAP have since recovered strongly. The stocks are currently up 10% and 12% respectively compared to levels prior to last week's updates.

Shares says: It is hard to see how much longer this level of volatility can continue before markets either make a decisive move down or flatten out. Both on PEs of 20 plus, use this latest rally to take profits.

SELL London Stock Exchange and ICAP

by: Simon Keane