Break-neck activity keeps market hopping

For the third straight month, records were shattered on the Toronto Stock Exchange making March the all-time top month for both dollar value and share volume traded.

Dollar value traded rose to a record high of $10.4 billion, representing a 6.5% increase over February’s $9.8 billion. Share volume was up by 16.8% to 738.6 million shares compared with 632.5 million shares traded in February.

In comparison with March, 1986, total dollar value and share volume recorded huge increases of 66.5% and 25.8% respectively.

In the first quarter of this year, dollar value traded rose to $28.7 billion, the highest quarterly trading ever recorded on the tse. This is an astounding 104.9% leap from the previous quarter and is 65.7% higher than the comparable period last year.

Share volume traded in this period was also the highest on record. Share trading reached 1.97 billion shares, a 75.3% jump over the last quarter and a 38.5% increase over the first quarter of 1986.

An average daily value of $455.6 million traded during the first three months of this year and an average of 31.3 million shares changed hands daily on the exchange compared with $279.4 million and 23 million shares traded in the same period a year ago.

The total number of issues listed on the tse reached a record high of 1,596 issues on March 31 surpassing the previous record of 1,582 issues set on Feb 26 of this year. Of the 14 new companies listed for the first time in March, three were in the resource sector: Eastmain Resources, Ican Minerals and Stewart Lake Resources.

Activity was also break-neck on the options market. In March trading in stock options on the tse reached 367,760 contracts, the highest on record for any one month, surpassing the previous record of 339,073 contracts traded in February by 8.5%.

The dollar value of option premiums traded reached $875.9 million, an increase of 18.2% from the previous month. Of the total premium value, trading in Puts options accounted for 10.8%, compared with 10.5% in February.

In March, silver options traded a total of 3,174 contracts with a premium value of $194,586(US) compared with 799 contracts with a premium value of $33,783(US) traded in February. Open interest stands at 2,335.

Dome Mines was the most active issue traded in the options market with 36,163 contracts.

Looking at action on all five Canadian exchanges, value of trading in the first quarter of this year rose to a record $37.4 billion, up 100% from the previous quarter. Share volume traded in this period, also the highest on record, was up 60% to 3.9 billion shares compared with 2.4 billion shares traded in the previous quarter.

Total value of trading in March on the five exchanges reached $13.5 billion, the highest ever traded in any one month. This represents an increase of 6.7% over the $12.7 billion traded in February and is 63.8% higher than March of the previous year.

The tse accounted for 77.2% of the total value traded on Canadian exchanges, down slightly from the 77.3% in the prior month. The Montreal Exchange accounted for 17% of total dollar value traded in March, down from the 18.5% in February.

The vse represented 5% of total dollar value, up from the 3.7% in February. The Alberta Exchange accounted for 0.8% of the total dollar value, up from 0.5% in February.