Borsa Italiana and London Stock Exchange leader in Europe for ETF trades
21 August 2008

Written by Sophie Baker

Aggregated figures show that July 2008 set a record in trading of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) on Borsa Italiana and London Stock Exchange markets, with 140,452 trades amounting to a highest ever total of €8.8bn (£7.0bn).

The average daily value traded was €383.2 million, an increase of 141 per cent year on year, and the total amount traded was an increase of 152 per cent.

For Borsa Italiana, July 2008 set a record figure for turnover on the ETFplus market, with the average daily value traded reaching €236.3 million, an amount up by 102.1 per cent on July 2007. ETFplus is Borsa Italiana’s regulated electronic market, dedicated to the trading of the instruments that replicate the performance of indices of single commodities – ETFs, Structure ETFs and Exchange Traded Commodities (ETCs).

July 23 2008 also set a new record with €582.1 million worth of trading taking place in a single session. Overall, from January to July 2008, 809,689 trades were conducted on ETF Plus, with trading totalling €27.5bn.

A spokesperson for Borsa Italiana explained to European Pensions that ETFs were worthwhile considerations for pension funds."ETFs have no expiring date so are good for long term investments; they have low costs, as underlined by "exchange traded funds- Q1 2008 Global Industry Review", this strenghten their efficiency.
Furthermore, many studies confirme that on the long run (10-20 years) active funds cannot beat related benchmarks: tha's why, under a performance profile, the best solution is to acquire the benchmark itself through an ETF."