Market making activity declines further in March for KCG, down further from February’s contraction following January’s high, whilst OTC trading tails off slightly.
KCG Holdings, Inc. Class A (NYSE:KCG) has released its trade volumes for the month of March 2015 for the entirety of its operations.
In US equities market making, KCG averaged $29.7 billion dollar volume traded, down 3.5% from the $30.8 billion achieved in February, and considerably short of January’s $32.6 billion, taking the performance down lower than the $30.1 billion in December 2014.
In Market Making, KCG averaged $29.8 billion dollar volume traded, 5.2 billion shares traded, and 3.8 million trades per day in U.S. equities.
Trading on OTC markets at KCG in March amounted to a daily average of 35,000, which appears to be on a par with February’s 36,000 average per day, however February was an exceptional month in that the company bucked the trend experienced by many electronic trading firms in February this year in which OTC volumes suffered across the board, with KCG’s remaining level.
Whilst OTC trading activity is still considerably down from one year previous, when three times that amount was being traded per day, March 2014 having brought in an average of 108,000 trades per day, a move up from January’s performance in February was unusual, however, contrary to many market participants, OTC trading in January this year was a low point, indeed the lowest for over a year at KCG, with a daily average of 36,000 trades, thus March’s 35,000 average per day is par for the course.
Global Execution Services
KCG’s algorithmic electronic execution operations was sold in March to BATS Global Markets, as the transaction took place, finalizing the sale of Hotspot and removing it from KCG’s ownership entirely. The final month of reporting by KCG shows that Hotspot left the KCG stable on a high note, with a $34.3 million average daily volume, compared to $26.3 million average daily volume in February.
At a glance:
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KCG electronic execution averaged 278.7 million shares traded in March per day in U.S. equities
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KCG Hotspot averaged $34.3 billion per day in notional foreign exchange dollar volume through March 12, 2015
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KCG BondPoint averaged $151.3 million per day in fixed income par value
As for the overall market conditions in March, consolidated U.S. equity volume averaged $275.7 billion in dollar volume and 6.7 billion shares traded per day. The realized volatility for the S&P 500 was 14.6.
For the official announcement from KCG, click here.